Six lessons from "IShowSpeed" African Tour

Speed trip to Africa has exposed realities that the world cannot ignore. The world need to unlearn the systemic miseducation about African and be better.

In the month of January 2026, the internet and social media have been in overdrive. And right at the center of it all is IShowSpeed.

IShowSpeed, whose real name is Darren Jason Watkins Jr., is an African American YouTuber and live streamer known for his extremely high-energy, loud, and unpredictable persona. He rose to global fame through gaming streams, reaction videos, and IRL livestreams where exaggerated emotions, impulsive behavior, and chaotic humor regularly go viral. Beyond gaming, he has expanded into music, travel, and public livestreams that attract massive crowds and millions of viewers across the world. Loved by fans for his raw authenticity and entertainment value and criticized by others for controversy, Speed has become one of the most recognizable internet personalities of his generation. And yes, I love him.

Speed has traveled widely as part of his work, visiting Asia, Europe, and other regions. In January 2026, however, he made his first trip to Africa. What followed was something worth paying attention to. His visit sent social media into a frenzy as he moved through multiple African countries, drawing crowds, sparking conversations, and exposing realities many people had never been forced to confront.

This article examines lessons that can be learned from this trip. These observations are based on Speed’s viral videos, the global reactions to them, and the conversations they triggered across social media platforms worldwide. So, what has Speed trip teach the world about Africa, and about the world’s relationship with it?

Africans are a happy and welcoming people.

Anyone who truly follows Speed’s adventures across the world will notice something unmistakable. No other continent or group of people has received him with the level of enthusiasm, joy, warmth, and spectacle that Africans did. This is not an exaggeration. It is plainly visible in the videos. Africans welcomed him openly, celebrated him, danced with him, introduced him to their cultures, and treated him like family. Race did not matter. Religion did not matter. Difference did not matter.

That is African humanity. Despite centuries of exploitation, colonization, stolen resources, and humiliation, Africans remain welcoming. They did not call him an alien. They did not brand him illegal. They did not deploy policies, technology, or language designed to make him feel inferior or unwanted. Different tribes welcomed him, shared their customs, and made deliberate efforts to make him feel at home. That is Africanism. And frankly, that is how human beings are supposed to treat each other.

Africa is a beautiful place.

Speed showed scenes of stunning cities, vibrant streets, modern malls, rich landscapes, and thriving social life. His trip shattered the lies many people in the United States and the Western world have been fed their entire lives. For many Americans, this was an awakening. Africa is not a jungle filled with madness, mud houses, people living on trees, and chaos. That image was manufactured. It was deliberately constructed so Africa could be looked down upon, dismissed, and exploited without moral discomfort.

Africa is not a country.

For the first time in the lives of many Americans, including African Americans, both educated and uneducated, this basic truth finally became unavoidable. Africa is a continent. A continent with the largest number of countries in the world. Yet generations have been conditioned by their educational systems to imagine Africa as a single country tucked somewhere “in the jungle.”

I experienced this ignorance firsthand while studying in the United States. One day, I boarded a bus, and the white American sitting beside me asked if I knew someone. When I said no, he replied, “Oh, I thought you were from Africa, so you would know him.” I asked where in Africa the person was from. He said Zimbabwe. I am Ghanaian. That moment made it painfully clear that even at the college level, many Americans conceive of Africa as one small, undifferentiated place where everyone somehow knows everyone else. This ignorance is not accidental. Even world maps have been deliberately distorted to make Africa appear smaller than it truly is. That alone should raise questions.

Joblessness among African youth is real and devastating.

Amid all the joy and excitement, an uncomfortable question must be asked. How were so many young people able to abandon their responsibilities during working hours to follow an entertainer across cities and countries? The answer is painful but simple. Many of them do not have jobs. Youth unemployment is crippling the continent.

This widespread joblessness also explains the intense attachment to entertainment and spectacle. When people are denied meaningful work and opportunity, entertainment becomes both escape and survival. But this condition is not accidental either. The lack of job creation across Africa is a direct consequence of imperialist domination. Africa’s natural resources are exported in raw form to foreign nations, where industries are built and jobs are created elsewhere. Africa, meanwhile, is left under-industrialized, dependent, and reduced to a consumer market. The result is a continent full of idle youth, collapsing hope, and wasted potential.

Neocolonialism and imperialism are still alive in Africa.

African minerals that could enrich the continent remain under the control of Western powers. This reality was exposed clearly during Speed’s visit to Botswana. While visiting a mall, he was introduced to a diamond company. Shocked to learn that diamonds are found in Africa in both rough and refined forms, Speed attempted to buy some. He was told he could not. In fact, he was told that no one in Africa, or anywhere else, could buy them. Only two companies were authorized to do so. Foreign capitalist corporations t have monopolized the diamond industry in that region.

This is the reality. Africa’s resources, under the language of capitalism and democracy, are still controlled by foreign interests, while the true owners of those resources live in poverty. The public reaction to this moment was intense because it exposed an uncomfortable truth. Imperialism never ended. It simply changed its vocabulary and refined its methods. Africa is still not free.

The world’s view of Africa is not Africa’s view of the world.

This may be the most revealing lesson of all. In African educational systems, students are taught European and American history in detail. We learn their political systems, their wars, their leaders, and their ideologies. This is not neutral education. It is the residue of colonial schooling designed to position the West as superior. Meanwhile, African history, African philosophies, and African self-knowledge are sidelined or treated as optional.

Most Africans can name Western countries, presidents, kings, and capitals with ease. The reverse is not true. In the Western world, Africa is taught as inferior. Everything chaotic, primitive, inhuman, and demeaning is associated with Africa. That is why so many Americans and African Americans were seen on TikTok and other platforms crying in disbelief, admitting they had been lied to all their lives. They were shocked to see skyscrapers, highways, malls, and functioning cities. Some were stunned to learn that the very minerals powering Western development largely come from Africa.

I have had Black friends in the United States tell me that while growing up, they were taught to be grateful for slavery. They were told that without slavery, they would not have had the opportunity to live in America. I was shocked the first time I heard this. I also learned that many were taught Africans sold their own families into slavery, that white people never kidnapped anyone, and that Africa was something to distance themselves from. That is why many African Americans want nothing to do with Africa today.

Yet those same powers are deeply embedded in Africa, doing business, extracting resources, and enriching themselves. These are deliberate colonial strategies designed to divide Africans and disconnect people of African descent from their roots. When you convince a people that nothing good comes from where they come from, you control them.

Speed did not set out to expose any of this. But his trip did. And that alone should make us uncomfortable, learn and strive to make this world a better place.