In this research, the aim was to dive deeper into the way business in game development is done in African countries. What countries to look at first if you want to enter the African market? What business opportunities and future prospects lie on the continent?
When we talk about Africa as a region, it is important to say what we actually mean. Often, North Africa is excluded from these conversations because they are considered to be a part of MENA. In the interview, Nick focuses mostly on Sub-Saharan Africa (Egypt, Morocco, etc. excluded).
There is a bit of a danger here. Many people treat Africa as a country or a homogeneous region — which is absolutely not true. There are 52 different countries, thousands of languages, and hundreds of thousands of different cultures. So, trying to brush this notion of the African game doesn’t really make any sense. So, what is of interest in South Africa is markedly different from what you would find in East Africa, Kenya, or Nigeria.
There is a promising game industry ecosystem in Africa. One of them is East Africa (Rwanda and its regions). Central Africa is also a great territory for game studios. There's also a regional ecosystem: from Namibia and all the way down to Botswana. Another promising territory is South Africa, and then there’s West Africa, with Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon.
Africans don’t have a lot of events where they can meet up and talk about specific industries. They have to fly to another continent for a meeting with a partner; for example, you sometimes have to travel from Algeria to Ghana via Dubai if you cannot find a seat in the Egyptian Airlines.
Mobile development is big in South Africa, but there's only one country in Sub-Saharan Africa that can actually legally create a Google merchant account, which is South Africa. However, many other countries have been added to a beta. How are you expecting to have a thriving game development industry where they cannot monetize through the platform that exists for them to do so?
A lot of studios in Africa lack funding. Funding is something that is really hard to get. Even after a few years of launching my company, and as I speak, I always think of where to find more funds and whom I should pitch our game to as well.
The problem really is that the chances of getting a job at a local game studio is very low because there are only a few studios around Africa. So, if you want to get into gaming (like going and actually handing your CV to somebody) you either have to go overseas or work remotely for a foreign company.
For example, if some fairly big foreign company wants to open an office in Africa, it’s not going to be easy. They would need to find around 50 skilled local developers and technicians to fill the seats, which isn’t impossible but is really hard.
Free Lives also struggle with finding skilled talents, so they invest a lot of time and money on student game jams and festivals to get younger people into gaming and to create awareness.