29/01/2026
What Africa Is NOT Learning From IShowSpeed's Visit
I was glad that the Internet sensation, IShowSpeed, visited Africa and streamed his trip. Many people, especially people of my generation and older, tend to underestimate the impact of the young man's odyssey across Africa.
Streaming is big business and one of the fastest-growing media in travel and entertainment. The visit gave our continent a new lease of life and opened it to global tourism, a multi-trillion-dollar industry. Some of those who watched the streams will visit Africa, and they will spend money here.
But even more interesting and impactful is how it has opened up the eyes of many Americans, especially African Americans, who still labour under the delusion that Africa is an extremely backward place with no infrastructure.
For years, their perception of Africa was influenced by so-called Christian and humanitarian organisations which deliberately cause billion-dollar damage to our reputation with advertising campaigns soliciting donations by projecting a starving African child with festering wounds covered by flies.
But instead of making the most of this unearned ad campaign and taking it to the next level, we Africans are engaging in a pi***ng contest on who hosted Mr Watkins to the best tour and who can de-market the other Africans the most.
Africans have flooded TikTok and other streaming platforms with skits mocking each other over the visit. We are all behaving like Peter Obi of Nigeria, who goes into ecstasy when negative events happen in his country.
South Africans are calling Nigerians the 'Beggar King,' a spin on the American fast-food chain Burger King, and some Kenyans are mocking Ghanaians after the Shea Butter Museum event, which I thought was awesome.
But do we really realise what we are doing when we act in this manner? This is not some friendly banter. This is self-destructive behaviour.
As a Black African, it is good to promote your country, as I do, but it is not okay or necessary to talk down another African country. You've got to realise that our only real country is Africa as a continent. Almost all of our individual countries were created and have been artificially imposed upon us by Europeans. Few African countries emerged naturally and organically.
And based on these 'lines in the sand' borders, we are discriminating against each other, and then we express shock when others look down on us collectively?
Why should other races raise our value when we demean ourselves by ourselves?
As big as IShowSpeed has become, was he able to escape racism when he visited North Africa? A big fat no.
And that is something we all should be addressing, but no! We are not addressing it. We are un******ng each other.
No one will raise our value as a race but us. And we cannot raise it selectively. We can only do so collectively.
Nigeria was created by the British and named by a female English correspondent of The Times of London—Ditto for Kenya, which was British-created and German-named. Mozambique was Portuguese-created and named after an Arab slave trader, Musa Bin Bique. South Africa is the creation and name of the British and Dutch.
I could go on and on about other African countries, including Cameroon, which just means 'shrimp' in Portuguese, and so on. But you get the point.
The Black man is easily divided: African Americans against Black Africans. Afro Caribbeans against Black Africans and African Americans. And then here in the Motherland, we are still strengthening the artificial boundaries set at Otto von Bismarck's 1884 Berlin Conference by dissing each other?
We see an Oyinbo or Mzungu, smile, see our fellow Black African brother from another mother, and frown?
Look, unity has got to start from somewhere, and Black Africa is a good place to start.
Make an effort today to embrace your fellow Black African and resist the urge to compete, compare, or flex muscles with them based on a name and border that neither you nor your ancestors established.
Let me end by praising Ghana. I was so impressed by the Shea Butter massage incident, not because of the obvious eroticism of the experience. No.
Look at the photo again. Every girl masseuse in the picture has her natural hair. I saw this a lot when I visited Ghana. Ghanaian women, even those who can afford it, tend to make a conscious choice to keep their natural hair. That is not to say they do not wear bone-straight hair. Some do. But it is not as pervasive as in other Black African nations I have visited. And you guys know me. I have visited everywhere.
The only other African country where I experienced this on a wide scale is in Ethiopia.
It is so pleasing to me and feels like a breath of fresh air, because I have been campaigning for this for too long.
Our women should learn from Ghanaians and keep their natural hair. Nothing screams inferiority louder than spending money you will not spend on books to buy 'Brazilian' hair, which actually originates in Asian temples as offerings to their gods, and then putting it on your head as a symbol of beauty, when it is actually a sign of your self-loathing!
Reno Omokri
Gospeller. Deep Thinker. . #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year 2022. 21st Most Talked About Person in Africa, 2024.
