The government of Kenya has announced plans to disburse KShs 300 million to meme makers, meme lords and meme forwarders as one of the initiatives to cushion them from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement from the president who serves as the patron of the memes club, also known as the Meme-in-Chief, the meme industry will receive 300 million shillings and this will be shared among all the people in the industry, which majorly consists of young people and also old people with nothing to do.
“We expect that this measure will not only help support our most vulnerable, but also help keep Kenyans happy and entertained in these gloomy moments. We will also ensure that starting next month, memelawds will be receiving at least KShs 12,000 per month to ensure that they keep Kenyans entertained and laughing. We have set up Postamate to help with the distribution of the funds.”
The president admitted that he is a great fun of Kenyan memes and he regularly follows them using one of his parody accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and most recently, Tiktok. He acknowledged the great role that memes play in keeping the nation moving even in gloomy moments, an effect which accounts for about 5% of the GDP.
Meme makers will be compensated based on originality, volume of memes produced and ability to make memes out of unlikely situation. For the meme forwarders, one will be judged by the number of forwards made, and ability not to forward old memes.
At the moment, Kenya has about 17,000 registered memers.
