Esports in Nigeria

In a room decked out in futuristic decor in an upscale district of Nigeria's economic capital Lagos, several thousand visitors gathered for a giant video game tournament on Saturday.

Whipped up by an emcee, crowds of young spectators cheered all day in front of the competitors whose games were interspersed with concerts of local Afrobeats stars, Victony and Crayon.

Competitors battled it out in popular eSports games like "Call of Duty: Mobile", "Street Fighter" and "FIFA".

The bling of the "Nigerian-style" show lived up to the ambitions of Africa's leading economy as it looks to establish itself as an eSports –- electronic sports –- leader despite the economic and logistics problems the country faces.

South Africa is now crushing the African eSports scene, thanks to numerous investments, followed by Egypt and Morocco, then to a lesser extent by Senegal, Ivory Coast and Kenya.

But Nigeria has something to make its neighbours swoon because its strengths -- and its challenges -- are immense.

Immense especially in size: it is the most populous country in Africa with more than 215 million inhabitants, renowned for being competitive in business, sports and music. And three-quarters of the population is under 25.

In Lagos, in the midst of the din of the tournament he was supervising, Kunmi Adenipebi explained it was almost impossible to know exactly how many players there are in Nigeria.

"Some say there are 60 million players in Nigeria. We did a survey and we know one thing for sure: there are at least 3 million players," said Adenipebi, chief of operations at Gamr, which organised the event.
Feet of clay

The potential pool of Nigerian players is enormous: broadband internet penetration has reached 48 percent, almost all via smartphone, and it continues to grow.

This is only the beginning, however, as Nigeria will be the second most populous country in the world at the end of the century with nearly 790 million inhabitants, just behind India, according to Lancet projections.

But, between widespread poverty, power cuts and the poor quality network, Nigeria remains a colossus with feet of clay.

It has few professional players even if there are more and more since the global Covid pandemic, Adenipebi said.

"Esport is a beautiful opportunity for our youth and to pull people out of poverty. We want it to become a means of living," said Chike Okonkwo, co-founder of Gamic, which promotes eSport.

A few metres from the main hall, Akintoye Arogunmati, who goes by the name "The_Arogs", was participating in the tournament.

Eyes glued to the screen, the 25-year-old, one of Nigeria's best professional players on "FIFA", says he earns an average of 300,000 naira (420 euros) per month. This is 10 times the minimum wage of 30,000 naira.

Last November, he participated in the Paris Games Week, which he called "a dream".

But "there are so many challenges to overcome" before he can get ahead, he said, laughing, his controller in his hands.

"Being a gamer in Nigeria comes with so many challenges. For an average Nigerian, equipment and generators are very expensive. There is no constant electricity in Nigeria. And the network," he said.
Nightmare

To play online, a gamer must obviously have a good internet connection but also a low "ping", a nightmare for many Africans.

Ping is the reaction time between when a player presses a key and when that action actually takes place in-game. It is the round-trip time between the player and the server they are on.

African players are at a disadvantage in online competition because the servers for almost all games are hosted in Europe, North America or Asia. That means it takes longer for African players' actions to register in the system.

"It is so frustrating, you know that the guy is not as good as you but because of the ping, you can't do anything. You can't compete," said Arogunmati.

In the room drenched in purple and blue neon lights, players compete on state-of-the-art giant screens. In the VIP area, the whisky flows freely.

The glitzy scene contrasts with the reality facing pro players, because even when you are a champion, life has "nothing fun" and the rewards are too low, said pro player "K.I.D".

"For a tournament like this one, they can pay you in three months or more," said Kevin Durst, a pro competitor in "Street Fighter".

"The reality is that without my sponsors I wouldn't have anything to eat."

AFP

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Nigeria generates over N730b from gaming yearly

National Commissioner/CEO of the Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB), Dr. Vincent Olatunji, has said that Nigeria generates over N730 billion from the gaming industry yearly.

He said this at the maiden National Symposium for the Nigeria Gaming Industry organised by Velex Advisory in partnership with the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) and NDPB, held in Lagos on Thursday.

Olatunji said the gaming industry was becoming a major driver of the country’s economy, providing jobs to thousands of citizens. Quoting research findings, he said the global industry reached nearly $465 billion in 2020, having grown at a compound yearly growth rate of 2.1 per cent since 2015.

According to him, the market is expected to hit $674 billion in 2025 at a compound growth rate of 7.7 per cent. The figure could reach $895 billion in 2030.

He said over 60 million Nigerians, aged between 18 and 40, are involved in sport betting, with the operators paying taxes to the government and engaging young people who would have been jobless.

“The growth is driven by passion. People who play games or bet do so out of the passion they have for the sport, football in particular,” he said.

While delivering a paper titled, ‘Gaming and Data Protection Compliance – Implication for Regulators, Operators and Stakers: the Future of Cyber Security, the expert said the quality of data on the gaming industry has increased tremendously in recent years.

He, however, warned operators that data protection and privacy are key in safeguarding their businesses.

Velex Advisory executives said that Nigeria has the most attractive gambling industry with favourable regulations, huge gambling population and an increase in Internet penetration.

“We establish and sustain a good relationship with the regulators providing an advisory role to promote compliance and ensure the growth of existing gaming business in the industry,” the executive noted.

The Director General of the National Lottery Regulatory Commission, Lanre Gbajabiamila, noted: “The gaming market in Nigeria is experiencing progressive evolution; punters can conveniently place their bets on different platforms using various media access available.

“Also, Nigerian punters can access a variety of regulated digital games like sports betting, lotteries, slots, table games like poker and blackjack through both domestic and international commercial gaming operators.”

Gbajabiamila said one out of every 23 digital gaming transactions is fraudulent, with attack rates for account creation and payment transactions estimated at 5.6 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively.

Suppliers must, therefore, implement robust cybersecurity measures to lessen the risk of fraud and network security vulnerability, he said.

On his part, the Chief Technology Officer, Infoprive Limited, Gbolabo Awelewa, said it is important to know the actual number of people that are involved in gaming, which is the reason data management is key.

By Michael Akinadewo

The Guardian

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Meet Hugo Obi: Nigerian Entrepreneur Changing The Video Gaming Landscape In Africa

Meet Hugo Obi: Nigerian Entrepreneur Changing The Video Gaming Landscape In Africa

Over the last decade, we have seen significant growth in the entertainment and media industry across Africa with both Afrobeats and Nollywood growing not just on the continent but internationally. An industry that has been slowly growing in the background as mobile technology is adopted on the continent is gaming. One entrepreneur who has been building a gaming company for almost a decade is Hugo Obi, founder of Maliyo Games.

Early Beginnings

Hugo was born in the U.K. but grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and stayed there until his early 20s when he came back to the U.K. for university. He long had an interest in technology and in particular the business side of the industry. In light of this, he opted to study International Business, Economics & Finance at Manchester University. Upon completion of his studies like many of his peers in the late 00’s he decided to get a job in finance working for GE Capital. He quickly realized however that the corporate life wasn’t for him and decided to set up his own company helping large organizations find diverse talent for graduate recruiting. Some of the companies they worked with included Google when they first moved to the U.K. as well as many leading investment banks, law, and accounting firms.

Maintaining an interest in Nigeria and being entrepreneurial by nature Hugo took note of a shift in the narrative around Africa being a “rising star” in the early 2010s. Many people he knew from the diaspora had started moving back and during a conversation with a friend discussing the rise of the music and film industry, they realized how big the gaming industry could be. Many tech companies, particularly in the e-commerce space were expanding to Africa so he had confidence that building something would be feasible. This was the birth of Maliyo Games, a company that would explore creating games for African consumers that would increase diversity in gaming the same way Afrobeats has for music and Nollywood for film.

Maliyo Games

When Hugo announced Maliyo Games there was a significant amount of interest given the mood towards tech on the continent at the time. However, setting things up proved to be difficult as whilst Nigeria had an abundance of creative talent able to do things such as 2-D animation, write stories and create graphics there was a dearth of technical talent. In the end, they decided to outsource the technical side of building games internationally whilst doing the graphics and design in-house. They launched their first few games which were desktop at the time and received a great reception. The games proved to be the backbone and validation for the mobile games they would later launch on Android as the platform grew across Africa.

The inspiration for the first games on mobile such as Mosquito Smasher, a game where the user has to squash mosquitoes, a very common nuisance in Africa went on to become a success. Applying a level of cultural relevance to good game ideals and practices continued to work for other games however, Hugo realized that to scale they needed to ensure that there was enough local talent in the ecosystem. To his fortune, this was also the time YouTube was becoming more widely used on the continent and its vast educational back catalog on how to program was valuable as many people who were not encouraged to pursue things like computer programming in school started learning in their spare time. Maliyo Games noticed this and started to work in the ecosystem setting up competitions as well as training boot camps for up-and-coming talent. This allowed them to help grow the ecosystem and secure a pipeline of talent for their own company. Today the entire Maliyo Games team is based in Nigeria, something which did not seem so possible at the start of the journey.

Having established itself as one of the leaders in the mobile gaming industry in Africa and going into its second leg of growth Hugo says the company's focus is “not just on launching games that will be a hit but that will evolve and increase the standard in the industry”. Rather than quickly increasing their portfolio of 40 games they will focus on building and improving high-quality games. One of the games launching under this new ethos is called Danfo Racer, a racing game based around a “Danfo” which is a bus and popular form of transport. The game takes you around various parts of Africa racing which not only provides entertainment but allows the players to learn about different African country’s cultures.

A big part of Hugo’s mission when starting Maliyo Games was to help another industry, like music and entertainment, gain prominence in Africa developing products people could be proud of. This has evolved into not only wanting his company to succeed in doing this but building an ecosystem where he hopes many other gamers and gaming companies will realize the vast potential on the continent.

By Tommy Williams

Forbes

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