Nvidia: Africa’s game devs are reaching a new generation of players
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Africa is the last frontier market for games, and it’s starting to pick up a lot of momentum, according to game-focused managers at graphics and AI chip maker Nvidia.
I spoke about the emergence of Africa’s gaming ecosystem with Kate Kallot, head of emerging areas at Nvidia, and Ike Nnoli, senior product marketing manager for graphics and simulation at Nvidia. And they’re encouraged at what they see, with the continent’s studios surpassing $500 million in value in 2021.
They’ve been helping educate game developers in the fledgling market, and they’re identifying game studios that are advancing the industry in Africa. Andreessen Horowitz and Google recently led a $20 million investment in South Africa’s mobile game publisher Carry1st. But Nvidia has also identified mobile game studios such as Ghana’s Leti Arts and Kenya’s Usiku Games, which were highlighted in a recent Nvidia GTC event.
Kallot joined Nvidia in October 2020 with the aim of focusing on the African market.
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“We wanted to expand to developers in regions we had not really touched before including Africa,” Kallot said. “We started to engage with African developers at large. We originally started with AI and data science developers. And we quickly realized that the AI innovation other grassroots innovation was coming from developer communities.”
These studios and others are connecting with the hyper-connected African youth population, which uses mobile phones as their primary computing devices. These topics will be highlighted at Africa Games Week in South Africa on February 23 to February 25.
Nvidia signed up more than 30 developers
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