One of the world’s most popular content creators has been attracting huge crowds, mostly his young fans, as he undertakes a 20-nation tour of Africa, a continent he says is “full of surprises”.<\/p>\n
Pre-teen boys in Rwanda and Ethiopia cried with joy and excitement as they hugged their online hero in real life – known by his gamer tag IShowSpeed or simply Speed, who now has more than 48 million YouTube subscribers. He is famous for his high-tempo, frenetic and totally unscripted broadcasts that last anything from three to 11 hours. <\/p>\n
African Americans have also been moved to see the outpouring of love and respect shown to their countryman, who will turn 21 during his “Speed Does Africa” tour. <\/p>\n
In Eswatini he was given the name “Logijimako” – meaning “the one who runs” – during an initiation ceremony at a royal palace for him to become a warrior who protects the king and family. <\/p>\n
Others on social media have named him “Speedani”. <\/p>\n
Speed, whose real name is Darren Watkins Jr, was himself momentarily overwhelmed by the reaction of people in Angola – the first country he visited – where one fan recreated on the beach a meme of Speed’s “my mom’s kinda homeless” face.<\/p>\n
“Bro, I’m not going to lie,” he told the chat – the fans watching and commenting on his YouTube livestream.<\/p>\n
“I love the love in Africa. The energy here is crazy.”<\/p>\n
Over 28 days, he and his team of recording, security and logistics people plan to visit 20 countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Ghana.<\/p>\n
He is planning to see the sights, learn some history, explore daily life, culture and food, play sport, perform high-risk stunts, meet fans and lookalikes, meet some ministers of tourism – and generally experience whoever and whatever comes his way as he speed-walks and livestreams.<\/p>\n
“I want to show the world what Africa really is,” Speed declared during his South Africa stop – where he went car-spinning, learned some amapiano dance moves and got scratched by a cheetah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the world’s most popular content creators has been attracting huge crowds, mostly his young fans, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-376638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}