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Andrew Kibe is drawing some major recognition worldwide. The social commentator took to his TikTok account to announce that he has won a major award.
“We won! The Africa Social Media Star of the Year Award is coming home. Dec 3rd tupatane Nairobi,” read his brief comment.
He turned off the comments section to fans.
Meanwhile, he is gearing up to arrive back in Kenya. He has a meet and greet set for December where those eager to rub shoulders with him will part with Sh20,000 for the opportunity.
The news was shared with netizens back in September. He has dubbed the event ‘Andrew Kibe graduation’.
His goal is to sell 2,000 tickets saying this is a manageable crowd for him. Initially, he had set it to 300 people, but increased the number.
The content creator faced setbacks in September as well, when his YouTube account was suspended and he lost hundreds of thousands of followers.
He heavily protested the move blaming certain elements for losing the account. Kibe said he had not received an email indicating violations, which caused his termination.
“Sounds so pedestrian. Can you show me the emails of the violations? That is the procedure, right? I mean there is no way YouTube permanently blocks any channel that has more than 3000 videos with no paper trail?” he asked.
Head of Communications at Google Africa Dorothy Ooko explained why it was terminated.
Ooko said Kibe violated YouTube’s terms of service and was restricted from using the platform’s features.
She explained that after one channel was restricted, Kibe went on to use different accounts to get around the restrictions.
“He used another channel to get around these restrictions also known as circumvention, resulting in the termination of all his channels,” Ooko said in an X post.
Ooko was responding to Kibe’s fan Marian Wairimu who had called out YouTube for terminating the channels.
“Cancel culture can not be allowed to take root in content creation. Andrew Kibe’s termination of YouTube accounts is not about his message but a direct attack on the creative. Restore his accounts. Say no to cancel culture,” Mariam said.
BY MAUREEN WARUINGE