Nine years ago, if anyone had told Berthold Winkler, popularly known as Wode Maya, that he’d be one of the top YouTubers in Africa, he would have called bluff.

However, it is the year 2021, and Wode Maya has over 860,000 subscribers on YouTube, a feat, any Ghanaian is yet to achieve.

In a recent interview with Ameyaw Debrah, Wode Maya shares his journey and reveals that when he arrived in Ghana from China to take this YouTube thing to another level, Ghanaians were not very welcoming.

According to him, although he had made quite an impact in China with his very first videos, when the time came for him to move back to Ghana to focus on creating content in the motherland, nobody paid him any attention.

“I was making so much impact in China. But China was not for me. I decided to move to Africa. I came to Ghana and people in Ghana felt like who are you? We don’t know you. I was not recognised in Ghana,” he tells Ameyaw Debrah.

Wode Maya explains that his project titled “Africa to the world” came about as a result of the unwelcoming nature of Ghanaians. This is because he felt he needed to think Africa if Ghanaians were not going to accept him.

“My project was “Africa to the world”… and I was like if Ghana is not going to accept me as their own, I need to think Africa. I did all my videos in Ghana but it’s now that people are watching,” he shared.

When asked if Ghanaians have accepted him now, he said;

“I think so, but I feel like it’s because of the name that I’m making now.”

“We should always see people as one of our own. We shouldn’t wait for the person to be successful before we start celebrating the person,” he added.

Watch full interview below;