Yemen

Economy & income

Currency

• Yemeni rial (YER, ﷼)
• CRITICAL: the currency is SPLIT into two zones with very different rates — in the Houthi-controlled north (Sana'a, 'old' banknotes) ~533 per USD
• in the internationally-recognised-government south (Aden, 'new' banknotes) ~1,565 per USD (both ACAPS YETI, 12 Jul 2026)
• The Aden rial hit an all-time low of ~2,905/USD in Jul 2025 before central-bank stabilisation
• Generic converters showing ~240-250/USD quote a stale official peg and are misleading

GDP per capita

• ~$433 nominal (2024, World Bank current US$) — one of the world's lowest, and understated/volatile because of the exchange-rate split
• other estimates put it ~$650-820. ~$1,596 PPP (IMF, per Wikipedia GDP-PPP list)
• Total GDP only ~$16-18bn nominal
• Real GDP fell ~1.5% in 2025 (World Bank) after losing more than half its size since the 2014-15 war began

Average salary

• ~85,000 YER/mo gross as an aggregator 'average' (wage.is, 2026) ≈ only ~$55-160/mo at real market rates (Aden ~1,565 / Sana'a ~533 per USD) — treat with strong caution
• There is no functioning national wage survey
• ~80% of Yemenis live below the poverty line and vast numbers of public-sector workers have gone months or years UNPAID in both zones

Median salary

• n/a — no reliable national median wage is published amid the war and split statistical system
• one source cites a median near ~30,000 YER/mo but it is unverifiable and zone-dependent

Minimum wage

• ~21,000 YER/mo for public-sector workers under the pre-war Labour Code (≈ $13-39/mo depending on zone) — never updated for a decade of hyper-depreciation, so effectively meaningless
• there is NO statutory private-sector minimum (the Code only ties private pay to the public floor)

Cost of living

• Low in nominal terms but Numbeo data is extremely thin/low-confidence for Yemen (very few contributors)
• The real story is a humanitarian emergency: food-basket prices were ~26% higher YoY as of Jun 2025 and >60% of households report inadequate food consumption

Digital landscape

Population

41.2 million (Jan 2025, DataReportal) — very young (median 18.4y), 59.2% rural, growing fast

Internet users

• 17.7% (~7.29 million users, Jan 2025) — one of the lowest penetration rates in the world
• ~34 million still offline, held back by war-damaged infrastructure, power cuts and cost

Social media users

• 10.7% (~4.40 million identities, Jan 2025; = 20.3% of adults 18+)
• SEVERE gender skew: 69.7% male / 30.3% female

Mobile connections

• 22.6 million cellular connections = 54.9% of pop (Jan 2025)
• ~70.8% broadband-capable

Devices

mobile ~71.6% / desktop ~28.0% / tablet ~0.3% (StatCounter, Jun 2026) — desktop share is unusually high for a poor market, a legacy of shared PCs/internet cafés and weak home mobile data

Ad spend

• n/a — DataReportal publishes no national or digital ad-spend figure for Yemen
• there is no meaningfully measured formal ad market
• Advertising is largely informal, cash-based and runs directly through social media, TV and influencers

Top social platforms

TikTok ~4.40M ad reach among adults 18+ = 60.4% of internet users; the fastest-growing platform, +74% YoY — now the #1 short-video & discovery channel

Facebook ~3.80M reach = 52.2% of internet users; still THE hub for news, groups & social commerce

Instagram ~1.95M reach = 26.8% of internet users; younger/urban

X/Twitter ~1.39M reach; political & news-heavy

Facebook Messenger ~1.10M reach

LinkedIn ~630K; NGO/professional & diaspora

• YouTube — very widely used for TV, music & news; DataReportal publishes no ad-reach figure for YE

Messengers

• WhatsApp (the default for chat, calls & small-business selling)
• imo (very popular for cheap low-bandwidth voice/video calls to the large Gulf diaspora)
• Telegram (news, exchange-rate & market channels, groups, file-sharing)
• Facebook Messenger (~1.10M reach)

Payments & behaviour

Payment methods

• Cash (overwhelmingly dominant — a heavily cash-based, largely unbanked economy)
• Cash-on-delivery (COD) — the default for essentially all e-commerce
• Mobile-money / e-wallets (Jawali, Jaib, Floosak, Cash, mFloos, ONE Cash — fast-growing, bank/CBY-supervised)
• Hawala & money-exchange houses (e.g. Al-Kuraimi) — backbone of transfers & diaspora remittances
• Bank transfer — limited, urban & fragmented across the two central-bank systems
• Visa/Mastercard — negligible; international card rails barely function amid banking isolation

E-wallets

• Jawali (by WeCash, with Yemen & Kuwait Bank / Yemen Commercial Bank, under CBY supervision)
• Jaib (digital wallet)
• Floosak
• Cash (cash.com.ye — ~1,500 agents nationwide)
• mFloos
• ONE Cash / Kuraimi mobile money

Cash on delivery

• Very high — cash on delivery is the default and often the only trusted option for online orders
• prepayment is rare and distrusted

E-commerce

• Very low / nascent — weak logistics (damaged roads, fuel shortages), power cuts and low trust
• Most 'online' selling is social commerce via Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp shops, concentrated in Sana'a, Aden & Taiz

Notes

• Design every flow around cash + COD + local wallets, not cards
• Mobile wallets (Jawali/Jaib/Floosak/Cash) are the real digital-payment growth story and a rare bright spot
• the collapse of formal banking also explains surprisingly high crypto/P2P use

Audience & culture

Languages

• Arabic (official; ~99% — Yemeni dialects incl. Sanaani, Ta'izzi-Adeni & Hadhrami)
• Mehri (~70K speakers, Al-Mahrah — Modern South Arabian)
• Soqotri (~57K+ speakers, Socotra — Modern South Arabian)
• English (limited — educated urban, business & diaspora)

Religion

• Islam ~99% — Sunni (mostly Shafi'i) ~60-65%, concentrated in the south & southeast
• Shia (predominantly Zaidi, some Ismaili) ~35-40%, concentrated in the north & northwest
• This Sunni/Zaidi geography maps onto the war's front lines
• Tiny Jewish/Christian/Hindu/Baha'i minorities (<1%)

Median age

• 18.4 years (DataReportal, Jan 2025) — a very young population
• over 40% are children

Key seasons

• Ramadan (the biggest social & media period — activity & spending shift to late-night post-Iftar)
• Eid al-Fitr (gifting, clothing, food)
• Eid al-Adha (livestock/Qurbani & clothing spend)
• Prophet's Birthday / Mawlid (heavily & publicly observed in Houthi-controlled areas)
• Wedding season (summer) — a major discretionary-spend driver
• Back-to-school (autumn)

Cultural notes

• Deeply conservative Muslim society: creative must be modest, family-oriented and religiously careful, and marketing is effectively male-skewed (~70% of social users are men)
• Qat (khat) chewing is central to daily social life — the long afternoon qat sessions are a genuine mobile-usage window
• Commerce is trust- and word-of-mouth-based, which is why COD dominates
• Note the huge Gulf/global diaspora, an important higher-value audience for Yemeni-language creators

Where to find creators

• TikTok
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Instagram
• StarNgage / Modash (discovery)

Media landscape

Creators & public figures

Top creators

N

Nouh Al-Huwaiti (Hyper Yemeni) ~3.0M YouTube

YouTubeEntertainment, experiments & vlogs — one of Yemen's biggest individual creators (broad youth reach)

N

Najm Al-Ameri ~2.2M YouTube

YouTubeFolk poet (zamil/traditional poetry) — huge in tribal/cultural content

S

Shibl Sana'a (المصمم شبل صنعاء) ~2.2M YouTube

YouTubeDesign/graphics & phone-editing tutorials — practical how-to audience

M

Mut3ah ~2.1M YouTube

YouTubeEntertainment, gaming & comedy — young male audience

M

Maria Qahtan ~1.9M YouTube

YouTubeSinger & music content — one of the most prominent Yemeni female creators (brand-relevant for beauty/lifestyle)

Adam Saleh ~2M Instagram (Yemeni-American)

InstagramVlogger, musician & boxer — a global-diaspora Yemeni content star

Celebrities

Balqees (Balqees Fathi) ~15M Instagram (@balqeesfathi)

Yemeni-Emirati singer & actress — the country's biggest music/pop star and a top Arab-world influencer

F

Fouad Abdulwahed ~4M Instagram

Leading contemporary Yemeni pop singer, known for romantic ballads

Tawakkol Karman ~29K Instagram (prominent on X/Twitter & globally)

Journalist & activist — 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, first Arab woman & first Yemeni to win it

A

Ahmed Fathi ~563K Instagram

Renowned Yemeni oud master & composer (father of Balqees) — a pillar of modern Yemeni music

A

Ayoub Tarish n/a (legacy artist, pre-social-media fame)

Legendary singer & composer of Yemen's national anthem 'United Republic' — a national cultural icon

A

Amani Yahya n/a (niche/activist following)

Yemen's first female rapper — uses music to spotlight women's rights & social issues

Affiliate & traffic

Hot verticals

• Nutra / health & beauty (COD supplements — weight, hair, sexual & joint health)
• E-commerce / dropshipping via social commerce (gadgets, watches, fashion)
• Crypto / trading (rising, banking-collapse driven — grey)
• Utility apps — VPN, browsers, cheap-call apps (imo-style)
• Mobile VAS / content, airtime & apps
• Betting & dating (grey, offshore)

Active networks

• No Yemen-specific networks — media buyers reach it via broad MENA/Arab-GEO campaigns on global CPA/push-pop platforms (Adsterra, PropellerAds, RichAds, Mobidea, Clickadu)
• Meta Ads & Google/YouTube Ads (self-serve; billing friction due to banking isolation)
• Nutra/COD networks (Dr.Cash-style) for health & beauty offers
• Offshore betting affiliate programs (grey — 1xBet/Melbet reach users despite the ban)

Payouts

• Tier-3 very low — display CPMs roughly ~$0.1-0.5
• CPL ~$0.5-3
• nutra COD CPA ~$8-20
• betting first-deposit values well below the Gulf
• Diaspora traffic (Saudi/Gulf/EU) served with Yemeni-Arabic creative pays multiples of in-country rates

Competition

• Very low advertiser competition and extremely cheap CPMs, but hard to monetise: tiny buying power, no card rails (cash/COD/wallets only), war-disrupted logistics & internet, banned high-value verticals (gambling/crypto/adult), a ~70% male user skew and a dual-currency split
• Best treated as a low-cost volume + diaspora play

Seasonality

• Ramadan/Eid is the clear peak (late-night post-Iftar engagement & essential spending)
• summer weddings and back-to-school lift discretionary spend
• Watch for power cuts, fuel crises and connectivity outages that can suppress campaigns

Traffic sources

• Facebook / Meta (dominant reach)
• TikTok (fastest-growing)
• YouTube
• Telegram & WhatsApp
• Push & pop networks (very cheap)
• Influencer / UGC

Good to know

Capital

• Sana'a (de jure capital, seat of the Houthi authorities)
• Aden serves as the temporary/interim capital of the internationally-recognised government

Major cities

• Sana'a
• Aden
• Taiz
• Al Hudaydah (Hodeidah)
• Ibb
• Mukalla
• Dhamar

Time zones

Single zone — Arabia Standard Time (AST, UTC+3), no daylight saving

Android vs iOS

97%

Android 97% iOS 3%

Phone brands

• Xiaomi (~27.1%)
• Samsung (~26.8%)
• Motorola (~6.2%)
• Huawei (~5.8%)
• Vivo (~3.8%)
• (~18.8% 'unknown' — largely budget/Transsion & grey-market handsets)

Top e-commerce

• Bazzarry (بازاري — COD marketplace, delivers to Sana'a & other cities)
• Jeeey (delivery/e-commerce app)
• OpenSooq (classifieds)
• Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp social-commerce shops (the real volume)
• Cross-border reshippers (e.g. Qwintry) for imports

Peak activity

Evenings after Maghrib/Isha prayers, ~20:00-23:00 AST (post-dinner); the afternoon qat-session window (~14:00-17:00) is a real secondary usage spike; during Ramadan activity shifts to late-night post-Iftar

Creative taboos

• Religion & Islam (respect always)
• the Sunni-Zaidi/Houthi sectarian & political divide and the war itself (extremely dangerous ground)
• women's dress & visibility
• alcohol, pork, gambling & interest (all haram)
• nudity/sexual content
• LGBTQ themes (illegal)
• Avoid taking sides between the Aden government and the Houthi/Sana'a authorities

Also worth knowing

1. DUAL-ZONE reality — currency (~533 north vs ~1,565 south per USD), rules, connectivity and even prices differ sharply between the Houthi north & government south; target and price by region.
2. Mobile-first (~72%) and almost entirely Android (~97%), on slow/expensive networks — ship light creatives and lean on imo/WhatsApp-style low-bandwidth behaviour.
3. A cash & COD economy with fast-growing local wallets (Jawali/Jaib/Floosak/Cash) and, unusually, high crypto/P2P use as workarounds to the collapsed banking system