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What Is The Gaming Market In Africa Worth?

What Is The Gaming Market In Africa Worth?

The gaming market in Africa is young, and it faces the challenge of attracting people to the industry, but developers have a huge asset on the continent — the African story — says Abiola Olaniran in a CNBCAfrica report.

Olaniran won a mobile game competition in 2011 and now he’s Nigeria’s highest-paid Windows game developer, according to NigeriaCommunicationsWeek. He’s the CEO of Gamsole, a company that creates games for the Windows phone platform, taking advantage of its fast growth and in Nigeria’s unsaturated gaming market.

Globally, gaming is a $63 billion-dollar industry, CNBCAfrica reports. Africa’s mobile and gaming industry is growing fast.

“The African storytelling ability creates a fun factor for people all around the world,” Olaniran said. “One of the responsibilities of these new gaming companies is to actually create a gaming culture to get people interested in games in Africa. It’s not just about the ad hoc specific gamers, you have to get the ordinary people interested in it and that’s our home challenge.”

People wanting to get into Africa’s gaming industry must have a passion for gaming and understand how it operates.

The industry hopes to attract some of the 700-million mobile broadband subscribers on the continent. Lower broadband prices would help create a greater opportunity for people in the gaming industry, Olaniran said.

Just what is the African gaming market worth?

The South African gaming market is worth about $217 million and the Nigerian gaming market is worth about $71 million, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers entertainment survey, CNBCAfrica reports.

“And that’s when we still don’t have a gaming culture yet,” Olaniran said.