In this research, 80 Level Research team aims to present insights on the consumer market in Africa (the economy, game audience and their preferences, and also payments solutions) in order to equip the region's development decisions with facts.

What Can Be Expected From African Gamers 

Although countries on the African continent can economically be classified as developing ones, one shouldn’t hurry to overlook this region. Our research has indicated that Africa is one of the fastest-growing mobile markets. Over the last 5 years, the number of gamers there has doubled.

Moreover, according to gamedev experts from Africa, they are very motivated and enthusiastic to push the gaming industry towards further growth, which is another driver for the region. 

Managing Director at Free Lives, Dominique Gawlowski

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where people play games a lot. Here are the top countries with the highest total annual gaming revenue, saturation of gamers, and density of players who regularly spend money on game-related purchases.

Free to play

The African consumer game market is underdeveloped at the moment:

1. Mobile is undoubtedly the main gaming platform on the continent due to its accessibility and spread.
2. Add to the pot the general poverty multiplied by the fact that a huge part of African gamers don’t have a “paying mindset” yet. People in Africa aren’t as willing to spend money on games as they are in other countries.

CEO, Co-founder, Chair at Interactive Entertainment South Africa IESA, Nicholas Hall

It’s safe to say that those two factors already cast aside buy-to-play (premium) & subscription monetization models from “the greatest potential” pedestal on the local markets, which means the best two business models are free-to-play with ads and free-to-play with in-app purchases.

Mobile Money Is the New Black

Thinking about the most popular payment method, the first thing that usually comes to mind is credit/debit card, and that answer is right for a lot of regions. However, it’s not exactly true for the African continent. Again, African countries shouldn’t be treated as one, yet they do have something in common in this field. There are numerous financial barriers, leaving a huge amount of the population “unbanked.” Only ~48% of adults across the entirety of Africa have access to regular banking, according to Statista. 

Most people with a bank account are concentrated in countries like South Africa and Mauritius that have more mature banking systems. Looking for a way to work around this obstacle, Africa turned to alternative payment methods, especially mobile money services. And those did rise: In some sub-Saharan countries, more adults have a mobile money account than a regular bank account.

Founder & CEO at Digital Realm Entertainment, Thomas Shiva

Mobile money systems allow people to get cash from/to their mobile account through agents located at different places within the country (even in remote areas). Agents act as human ATMs. You can also use mobile money for e-transactions wherever those are accepted. So a mobile money account in Africa is basically the same thing as a regular bank account but without any actual bank present. At the beginning of 2022, 33% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account, compared to 10% of adults globally (The World Bank Report).

English, French, Spanish, or More Than 1000 Local Languages

Africa certainly can be named an exciting region language-wise: the amount of languages spoken on the continent varies between 1,250 to 2,100. However, taking into account the historical aspect of colonization, the languages of colonizers still remain lingua franca or at least as the language of commerce in many African countries. It has a great influence on the way decisions about game localization and business handling are made. Across the continent, there are five European languages spoken on a mass level — English, French, Portuguese, German, and Spanish. 

Co-Founder and Managing Director at Forspex Entertainment, Mohamed Bendjebbar

But if we want to name some of the local languages most widely spoken among the native population, there would be a hundred languages. Some of them are Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani, and Yoruba.

Founder & CEO at ChromaPixelGames, Edwin Kapesa

Our informants expressed two polar opposite opinions regarding the question of content localization. In the schema below, we display supporting arguments for both positions:

Is There an African Game?

Who is the target audience of a game made in an African country? Well, as it was proved by our respondents, it is quite challenging to make a game for African audiences for two reasons: 

1) They are willing to consume Western content. Their main interest is an exciting new story, just like any gamers’ is globally (titles like FIFA, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, and PUBG Mobile are very popular in African countries). 

2) The gamedev industry experts in Africa claim it is difficult to monetize African audiences (we have a whole section about game monetization down below).

CEO, Co-founder, Chair at Interactive Entertainment South Africa IESA, Nicholas Hall

• Based on these two reasons, most African developers prefer developing for international audiences, as that’s more commercially viable. 
• There is one distinct feature of African games that appeared — their narration and story-driven format with a lesser focus on gameplay. It was stated many times by our respondents that African games are unique in their storytelling.