IShowSpeed, a 21-year-old African-American influencer, has raced a cheetah, leapt with Maasai warriors and drawn huge crowds in a month-long tour of Africa that has also busted cliches about the continent.
The YouTube and Twitch star’s tour, which started on Dec. 29 last year, took him to 20 countries, showing his tens of millions of followers a different side of Africa as he visited a diamond mine in Botswana, discovered Ethiopia’s rich cuisine and attended the Africa Cup of Nations football final in Morocco.
IShowSpeed — born in Cincinnati, Ohio as Darren Jason Watkins Jr. — is one of the most followed influencers on the planet.
Photo: AFP
He hit 50 million YouTube subscribers last month, Rolling Stone magazine named him the Most Influential Creator of last year and Forbes estimates his net worth at US$20 million.
Subscribers to his channel have soaked up his African tour, with some black Americans posting emotional videos of their own saying IShowSpeed had opened their eyes to a completely different vision of the continent, far from TV cliches of endless poverty and violence.
“He shows another Africa, an Africa on the move, modernising, eager to achieve great things. He goes to places with modern infrastructure,” Qemal Affagnon from Internet Sans Frontieres (Internet without Borders) told reporters.
“At a time when the US executive can sometimes portray Africa in rather pejorative terms, he offers a different narrative. It’s something that has clearly resonated with his American audience,” the social media expert said.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s megacity of about 20 million inhabitants, the influencer celebrated his birthday as well as hitting 50 million subscribers on YouTube. In Angola’s capital, Luanda, he marveled at the warmth of the reaction to his visit.
“I love the love in Africa. The energy here is crazy,” he said.
On stops in Kenya and Addis Ababa, he was smitten by the architecture.
However, he was careful not to broach the subject of politics during his visits, especially in countries reputed to be autocratic.
Living up to his nickname “Speed,” he has applied the same formula as on other trips around the world — being filmed live by his teams as he dashes around at a frantic pace, alternating cultural discoveries, interactions with vendors or street artists with various antics.
The tour netted him nearly 4 million new YouTube subscribers in a month. His broadcast from the final of the Africa Cup of Nations has already racked up 15 million views.
His popularity is not contained to YouTube — he also has 45 million subscribers on Instagram and 47 million on TikTok.
For his fans, he was not setting out to present himself as the savior of Africa, but to show its true image.
“To be the first streamer from America to tour the entire Africa, it’s something historical,” Nigerian YouTuber Stephen Oluwafisayomi, 24, known as Stevosky, said.
“It’s a very big edge he just unlocked in the streaming industry,” he added.
The publicity might appeal to some governments keen to attract new visitors.
“There are countries that are currently reaching out to certain communities of people of African descent and it can serve as a link between these two worlds,” Affagnon said.
In Nairobi, he met Kenyan Minister of Tourism and Wildlife Rebecca Miano, and received a warm welcome via a video message from Kenyan President William Ruto, while in Egypt he received permission to film live inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
IShowSpeed started out like many streamers by filming himself playing video games.
The avid football and in particular Cristiano Ronaldo fan was not content to just remain in his gaming chair and has previously traveled in Asia, Europe and South America.
He has won several top streaming awards in recent years. In 2023, he became eligible to return to Twitch following a two-year ban from the platform for “sexual coercion or intimidation.”
In Africa, where he has donned the national football team’s shirt in each country he has visited, he has at times also been targeted, either by over-enthusiastic fans or by hostile members of the public.
He had to break off a live broadcast in Algeria because football supporters were throwing bottles at him in a stadium during a match.
As his Africa tour drew to a close recently, the streamer planned to take a DNA test which he hoped would reveal his origins on the continent.
Ghana later granted citizenship to the US YouTuber, the country’s foreign minister said, saying he had “irrefutable ties” to the nation.
While in Liberia, he met somebody with the same surname as him whose ancestors had left Ohio, IShowSpeed’s home region.
“He’s really my ancestor,” the YouTube star said.
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