American YouTuber Darren Watkins Jr, known as IShowSpeed or Speed, confirms he is still coming to Namibia following a recent permit issue.
The streamer has amassed over 47.3 million subscribers on YouTube, 43.2 million on Instagram and 45.3 million on TikTok.
“Yes, we are going to Namibia and every country that is on the list. We will be going,” he said yesterday.
This comes after the Namibia Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) says the operator in charge of flying the jet failed to submit the necessary documentation within the required time frame.
In a live-stream in South Africa on 31 December, Speed shared that he had to skip a country because a private jet company he hired two months prior failed to secure landing permits on time.
He said this led to him rescheduling his tour and flying commercially.
Speed has already visited a number of Southern African Development Community countries, including South Africa, Angola and Botswana, displaying them to his 47 million subscribers.
According to Joseph Hangula, a Namibian cultural representative in the United States, nothing about the entertainer’s visit was officially announced, likely for the influencer’s safety, but if hosted properly, it could provide massive international exposure for Namibia’s tourism industry.
Independent Patriots for Change chief whip Rodney Cloete describes the initial failure to grant the streamer’s private jet a landing permit as a failure of vision.
“What we witnessed was not a regulatory triumph, but strangulation by bureaucracy,” he says. “This was an extraordinary opportunity, yet business as usual was the default response.”
Digital expert Hafeni Yambeko says the visit is about more than celebrity culture.
“This was about boosting the creative industry,” he says.
“We need to stop seeing the internet as just consumption and start seeing it as a production engine.”
Member of parliament Sharonice Busch says the law must apply equally, but argues that the situation could have been handled better.
“Celebrities are not above the law. But his platform is of such magnitude that we should have ensured compliance without unnecessary delays. That kind of exposure is something we can leverage,” she says.
NCAA spokesperson Nelson Ashipala this week said the authority received the application less than 11 hours before the intended landing.
“Applications for foreign operator permits require comprehensive documentation and coordination and can take up to 14 days to complete,” he said, adding that the short notice made approval impossible.
He also confirmed that no drone permit application had been submitted.
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