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IShowSpeed’s Africa tour has likely taken over your feed. It is loud, chaotic, unfiltered, and very much unlike the content we are used to.

I am told it has broken African YouTube livestreaming records. Attention leaves footprints, and this one will probably leave a huge one.

Before the tour, I was largely indifferent. I knew Speed as a hyperactive Ronaldo fan and little else. I got more sceptical after reading a Reddit thread titled, “What are your opinions on IShowSpeed coming to Africa?”

The responses ranged from being dismissive, openly hostile, to cautiously optimistic.

“He won’t change anything. We don’t need Western validation.”

“This reeks of an inferiority complex. An American influencer coming to save Africa?”

“As a Kenyan, I’m excited. People making it about validation are weird.”

But the story was never about validation for Africa.

…

I saw different faces of Africa during the stream.

South Africa sat at the intersection of global relevance and African reality.

Kenya told a powerful tourism and street-economy narrative.

Rwanda illustrated youth culture and state order.

Uganda and Zimbabwe displayed deep youth energy.

The cityscapes of Ethiopia were no different from the Western cities we are indoctrinated to salivate over.

Africa has never lacked storytellers.

We have talented YouTubers, filmmakers, photographers, and journalists reshaping the narrative on a daily basis.

Just now I was watching Wode Maya touring Morocco. And am still in awe of the development I saw there.

What we lack, brutally and consistently, is global reach.

Speed is not insightful. He is not nuanced. He is not here to explain Africa. But he commands something far more valuable in the modern economy. He has global attention.

After Trump’s shithole countries comment, many Africans hoped for a counternarrative. This is not to impress Westerners, but partly to reconnect with the diaspora and capital. That matters more than we admit.

There are an estimated 350 million people in the African diaspora. Around 43 million Black people of African descent live in the United States alone. If the African diaspora were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India.

More importantly, the diaspora is liquid.

It earns over $200 billion annually and sends back more than $100 billion in remittances each year, often exceeding Foreign Direct Investment and Official Development Assistance combined.

Diaspora perception influences tourism, remittances, angel investing, real estate, music, fashion, and return migration. Attention is upstream of all of it.

To dismiss IShowSpeed outright is to reveal that we are probably old and unwilling to learn.

Africa is the youngest continent on earth. Roughly 60% of Africans are under 25, with a median age hovering around 19. This is the internet-native generation that does not consume Africa through propaganda-laced policy papers or glossy tourism ads. They consume it through social media, livestreams, memes, clips, and chaotic authenticity.

And that is where Speed’s tour landed with force.

Supporters describe it as real-time stereotype correction. No filters. No wildlife montages. Just cities, markets, jokes, music, traffic, people living ordinary lives.

This is especially true in countries like South Africa, where Elon Musk and Trump were spreading fear of white genocide, and western media portrays the country as one of the most unsafe destinations.

To see Speed touring the streets, not the ones made picture-perfect for G20, and still see him safe, and the people free and happy, was somewhat refreshing.

A single afternoon of unfiltered livestreaming delivered more global exposure to street vendors, markets, and neighbourhoods than years of traditional marketing.

In Kenya, coverage noted that this kind of reach dwarfs official tourism campaigns. Africa stopped being a brochure and became an experience.

Authenticity performs.

But only when backed by serious operations. What viewers saw as a mere YouTube stream was, in reality, a mobile media company. Serious thought was put into every facet of logistics, satellite internet, production crews, security, monetisation, and content repurposing.

This is what many aspiring creators miss. The creator economy is as much about systems as it is about talent. Talent alone won’t cut it.

In Rwanda, the tour became a landmark youth-culture moment. One live stream spawned thousands of derivative clips, memes, and posts. This is the creator flywheel, where one moment has infinite echoes.

There has been a bit of talk of celebrity link-ups. Especially in countries like Zimbabwe, where Speed was accused of ignoring some local celebrities who had local credibility but little to no global distribution.

Network transfer done right raises international visibility. In Zimbabwe, while some celebrities looked to benefit from Speed’s stream, they had little synergy and value to offer him. Relationships are supposed to be mutually beneficial.

Done poorly, network transfer feels transactional and extractive.

This is where Africa often loses.

Too often, moments happen on the continent, but value leaves with the platform star. No deal structures. No revenue share. No local capture.

For decades, African tourism has been sold through a narrow and predictable lens. Khaki shorts, safari hats, Land Cruisers cutting through the Sahara or Kalahari and binoculars hanging from sunburnt necks.

The continent is reduced to a picturesque sunset, a savanna, and a wilderness housing the Big Five.

This version of Africa is not false. But it was incomplete. It framed the continent as a place to be observed, not inhabited. Consumed quietly, not experienced loudly.

So tourism became passive. Beaches in Zanzibar or Bazaruto, game drives engineered for comfort, Africa as a scenic backdrop rather than a living, breathing society. Distant. Curated for outsiders.

What has been missing and what Africa has struggled to sell is itself.

Cities
Street markets
Nightlife
Music
Humour
Youth culture
Traffic
Informal economies
The ordinary lives of Africans doing ordinary things in extraordinary contexts.

This is something that local creators are blind to. They are so hellbound on correcting narratives that they act as PR machines divorced from reality and the very people they want to ultimately uplift.

Repositioning Africa as more than a nature excursion is an economic correction.

We have an opportunity to expand the African frame beyond wildlife excursions. To move Africa from something you visit briefly, to something you want to build and invest in.

Firstly, you need to build capture systems, not just virality. If your business sits near attention, you need signage, QR codes, WhatsApp funnels, and a clear post-hype offer. Virality without conversion is noise.

Secondly, treat creator work like operations. Scaling requires logistics, planning, monetisation, and teams. Cameras are the cheapest part of the stack.

Thirdly, monetise distribution. Exposure is not currency. Collaborations must have terms, deliverables, rights, and revenue share, or you are donating value.

So, was this good for Africa?

That is the wrong question.

Speed did not come to save Africa. He came to stream.

What we learn or fail to, about the business attention and virality is up to us!

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