The Burgeoning African Gaming Ecosystem: A Sit Down with Jay Shapiro, Co-founder Pan Africa Gaming Group( PAGG), Founder Usiku Games ( Kenya) & Nairobi Gaming Development Centre.
One of the most exciting aspects of Innovation Scouting is the opportunity to interact, chat, and learn from great people creating amazing solutions. In the quest to understand the African gaming industry — which, according to Geopoll, serves as a primary source of entertainment, relaxation, and stress relief for the majority of gamers (73% play for fun, 64% for stress relief and 92% of gamers being mobile users) — I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jay Shapiro, at the Nairobi GDC Centre, Nairobi; Jay is Co-founder of Usiku Games, Pan African Gaming Group (PAGG), and the Nairobi Game Development Centre; he is a key player in the development and growth of the Gaming Industry in Africa. The excerpt below is from the interview:
“Our mission is to tap into Africa’s potential aiming to reach the next billion gamers on mobile, PCs, and video game consoles. With over 200 staff and 100 published games, PAGG creates content tailored for over 270 million internet-connected African youth. ” — Jay Shapiro
Founder & CEO, Usiku Games & Nairobi Game Development Centre ( GDC). Co-founder Pan Africa Gaming Group ( PAGG)
Q: Hello Jay, before we delve into the gaming industry, could you tell us a bit about the Pan Africa Gaming Group (PAGG), a key organization in the African gaming ecosystem that you co-founded and currently chair?
Jay: PAGG began as an experiment, uniting a network of creatives from across Africa under a single mission: to create 100,000 jobs in the African gaming industry. Since our inception in 2021, we’ve grown to become the largest game development network on the continent. With Africa poised to become a top-three market globally for mobile gaming, PAGG is at the forefront, producing content made in Africa for Africa. We’ve embarked on an amazing journey, now encompassing nine independent studios across Africa. Our projects range from commercial work for global brands like Disney to social impact initiatives like wildlife conservation for endangered geckos and financial literacy programs for entrepreneurs in West Africa. Overall it has shown a whole new model of how creative talent can increase their output by cooperating and collaborating across cultures and geographies.
The best approach in building the ecosystem is beyond building companies but rather building an entire industry as is being done by PAGG.
Q: According to the 2024 report by Geopoll, 92% of gamers in Africa play them on their mobile phones, highlighting mobile gaming as the industry’s leader. Why is there such a strong focus on mobile gaming among African gamers and studios?
Jay: This preference is largely due to the increasing penetration of smartphones and the dominance of the Android platform. Africa already has more internet-connected smartphones than the USA, Canada, and Mexico combined, with around half a billion smartphones, each hosting at least one game. This creates a substantial market opportunity, making mobile games a key focus due to their widespread use across the continent.
Q: Can you share a specific setback and the key takeaways that have shaped your leadership in the gaming industry?
Jay: Gaming in Africa is a new industry, essentially everything is a challenge: talent, training, funding, infrastructure, monetization — it’s hard to isolate just one. A key setback, though, was COVID in 2020. The industry was just starting to gather momentum, and many of the studios across the continent were starting to build up their teams when suddenly the pandemic hit, we were all in lockdown, and the entire industry went on pause for two years. Even today, the largest studio in Africa has less than 100 people. By building PAGG, what we are doing is finally creating economies of scale by cooperating and collaborating across the different studios on the continent. This will, in turn, help us collaborate and solve some of the challenges mentioned above.
Q: The challenge of monetizing games is something many of us, myself included, haven’t fully grasped due to low CPM rates and limited spending by African gamers. What strategies do companies like yours employ to monetize games and generate revenue?
Jay: Traditionally, gaming companies have several monetization styles: Online purchases, subscription models, free-to-play, commission by brands/companies, and in-app purchases.
For Africa, it is a very different game plan. African game companies often create custom games commissioned by brands, NGOs, and government agencies, typically focusing on educational and social impact themes. These projects are funded up front by the clients and offered to players for free. While this approach provides revenue opportunities, it is heavily dependent on external funding and doesn’t ensure long-term profitability for developers. Historically, our companies have primarily generated income from these bespoke projects. The other model is Free-to-play and monetization by Advertisements, this model’s sustainability is low given CPM in Africa is very low in comparison with other regions. We are actively working on finding a sustainable model.
CPM ( Cost per Mille) — paid advertising option where companies pay a price for every 1,000 impressions an ad receives.
Q: Another key to a growing ecosystem is funding. No industry can grow without proper finance and funding. For investors who are interested in putting their funds into this Industry, how should they approach the African gaming industry?
Jay: It is important to recognize that the gaming industry, which is over $200 billion annually around the world, is a multifaceted, diverse collection of different sub-industries. Investors looking to participate in the gaming industry should first identify what areas of that industry are particularly of interest to them. That might be on the core infrastructure with investments in the tools, hosting, and gateways that serve as the picks and axes of the industry. Or they may be more interested in the financial elements of betting on particular IP titles through publishers. There are billions invested in the advertising side of the industry, and then, of course, there are the content creators themselves, like PAGG.
Investors looking to participate in the gaming industry should first identify what areas of that industry are particularly of interest to them.
In Africa specifically, there are also risk-profile decisions to be made around investing in more developed markets like South Africa or more “frontier” markets like Cameroon and Benin. One big advantage of PAGG is that we take a portfolio approach, so within the single PAGG entity, there is a variety of different size markets, there’s geographic diversity in terms of West Africa vs. East Africa, there is a diversity of cultures (French vs. English) and game types (social impact, branded, mobile casual, VR, Roblox, etc) — Each investor needs to choose what fits their thesis and risk appetite. Shifting towards development and funding supported by local consumers and investors, especially local angel investors, could provide more sustainable revenue streams.
Each investor needs to choose what fits their thesis and risk appetite.
Q: How do you approach talent development within the gaming industry, particularly in fostering a culture of innovation and growth?
Jay: If you were running a game development studio in most other parts of the world and you wanted to grow, what you would most likely do is just hire some talent from one of your competitors. However, in Africa at the moment given the newness of the industry, there aren’t competitors to poach from, What that means is we need to develop talent and capacity building is one of our key priorities as an organization. We approach this in three different ways:
- Partnering with training programs such as AkiraChix in Kenya, which works with at-risk young women to give them the IT skills needed to enter and succeed in the industry.
- Through the Nairobi Game Development Center, we are constantly running skills development workshops, hackathons, and our incubator to foster those who are already in the industry, growing their skills and learning from experienced mentors around the world.
-We seek out experienced professionals who are working in adjacent industries such as banking, telecommunications, and advertising, where people may have strong technical / art skills already, and all they need is to be taught the elements of game design itself.
Nairobi GDC is open to collaborating and working hand in hand with programs & institutions training game developers to help support and guide them.
The gaming ecosystem in Africa is on an upward trajectory, with significant developments happening behind the scenes. This interview with the renowned founder of PAGG, Usiku Games, and the Nairobi Game Development Centre provides just a glimpse into the vibrant and dynamic world of African gaming.
In conclusion, this interview offers a glimpse into the future of the African gaming industry and its promising prospects. Stay tuned for a detailed Snapshot of the African Gaming Industry, a look into startups, studios, top games, funding opportunities, etc.
