Do you know that Africa’s most common and swiftly growing gaming trend is on mobile?

Onigbanjo Taiwo
4 min readMay 4, 2023

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A growing body of substantiation backs our view that as Africa’s population doubles to two billion over the coming several decades, its GDP will increase from $ 2 trillion to $ 29 trillion in today’s plutocracy by 2050.

Microsoft Design

This claim was made by Charles Robinson, global principal economist at Renaissance Capital and lead author of The Fastest Billion.

While there has been a stunning relinquishment rate of mobile subscriptions across Africa over the last 10 years, the current number hovers around 960 million subscriptions and internet penetration have not kept up the same pace. In 2018, 216 million internet drug users were recorded, which is only 18 per cent of the mainland’s population. This gap makes sense, as it has only been lately that mobile subscriptions have reached such a high penetration rate. This gap, however, marks a major occasion for African internet companies to increase their request share, as there are still hundreds of millions of Africans who could be using mobile internet for their diurnal requirements rather than travelling to a position with a desktop computer.

It makes logical sense that mobile phone relinquishment would come first, for communication, and then on to internet relinquishment, which is used for secondary requirements such as social media, exploration, online shopping, and gaming. Once phone relinquishment occurs, the next stage of this elaboration is to gain access to the internet and also begin using it for whatever needs a person has.

It’s no surprise that mobile plutocrat requests have exploded in Africa over the last couple of years, as access to traditional banking and credit requests isn’t as extensively available as in some other corridors of the world. With over half of the world’s mobile payments being made in Africa alone, the untapped potential of this request is apparent in gaming trends in Africa. Since mobile phone power remains high and the mobile payments sector is exploding, the next mobile sector to see an increase in growth is likely to be mobile gaming.

A gamer on a mobile phone

Mobile gaming has already seen a surge in popularity in Africa, with games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds being widely played. In fact, some African countries, like Nigeria and Ghana, have even hosted international mobile gaming tournaments, showcasing the potential for growth in this sector. While most mobile gaming in the global economy takes place on smartphones, there’s an estimation of over 300 million Africans using smartphones, with the mobile plutocrat request estimated to be worth nearly 15 billion.

Live Pictures From Nigeria’s First PUBG Mobile Gaming Competition In Lagos — Phones — Nigeria
Live Pictures From Nigeria’s First PUBG Mobile Gaming Competition In Lagos

In Africa, a new creative energy is seeing tech geeks give up their consoles and day jobs to take on full-time video game development. It’s not a level playing field, but they’re engaging in a growing, hyperactive way. The youthful continent of the world has a new preoccupation with mobile gaming, which is one of the gaming trends in Africa.

Although most games produced in Africa have poor production values, African gamers are growing in popularity in the world of original African content. Africa is a significant market for video games and game technologies, but there aren’t many computer science or media studies programs there, and many kids start school with little to no computer or programming skills.

Take Khumo Moerane, the inventor of Kea’s World and author of the Africa Space Programme Video Games Studio in Johannesburg, South Africa, he uses an ultramodern medium to tell old tales, celebrating and conserving African myth among children and adults.

Kea’s World Sandton City Gamers Expo 21 to 24 Nov 2019 — Africa Space Programme Video Game Studio & Publishing
Kea’s World Sandton City Gamers Expo 21 to 24 Nov 2019 — Africa Space Programme Video Game Studio & Publishing

At the moment, he solely designs and develops Afrocentric videotape games and has reached another position altogether. Still, the gaming request is competitive with established marketable game inventors, yet the cost to download content in Africa and the digital peak are crippling issues, making this field prohibitive for many talented people.

Nevertheless, the African esports scene is still struggling when it comes to the international competitive gaming community. African teams are largely ignored and overlooked, their stories unheard of outside the continent’s borders. But not all hope is lost, and the future looks bright for the African esports scene.

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