Abdul Glowacki

A worker plays a video game in Maliyo office in Lagos on January 20, 2025 In a dream, a mysterious voice calls out in the night to King Alantako, warning of "chaos" ahead for the young Nigerian sovereign. He wakes with a start -- and sets out on an adventure that will lead him to his destiny and save the kingdom of Ile Kaaro Oojiire. So begins The Wild Kingdoms -- a Nigerian-made video game for mobile phones, published in 2022 by the Nigerian studio Kucheza. In a gaming world dominated by US and Asian giants, it is distinguished by its setting: west Africa's Yoruba ethnic culture. To develop their nascent industry, Nigerian studios are drawing on their native traditions and "natural creativity," said Hugo Obi, the Lagos-based founder of another maker, Maliyo Games. "That ability to tell stories and to tell unique stories and to build characters and to build worlds is something that Nigeria has done very well." The sector is still in its infancy, but they see great potential in a country where 70 percent of people are aged under 30 -- and with one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. "If you look at the diversity of food as an example, the diversity of languages," Obi said, "once you then start to blend those together, you start to create new forms and new styles." - Growing Nigerian game studios - Maliyo has grown from three to 36 employees in five years, providing its own online training programme to assemble a team of developers and designers in five African countries. Maliyo Games founder Hugo Obi poses for a photograph in his office in Lagos on January 20, 2025 An Africa-wide team of 14 people worked for 14 months to bring out its mobile-phone cooking game Iwaju Rising Chef, adapted from an animated series broadcast on Disney last year. In it, the player cooks up Nigerian specialities such as jollof rice and Hacksaw Gaming deep-fried dough balls known as puff puffs. A survey by Maliyo found that Nigeria was the fastest-growing out of the five leading African countries in the video game sector -- the others being Algeria, Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia. Nigerian gaming revenues were "surging", the report said, from $11 million in 2019 to over $60 million in 2024. It said Nigeria was home to nearly a quarter of all the studios on the continent. - 'Creative economy' - Besides the challenge of finding trained developers, Nigerian studios also struggle to secure funding, installmygrabbars.com studios complain. "Nigerians invest in real estate, Nigerians invest in oil and gas, Nigerians invest in anything tangible," said Obi of Maliyo Games. "This idea of intellectual property is something that is still very new and seen as high-risk." As well as the funding battle, developers also face patchy power and internet networks, slot inovatif said Ewere Ekpenisi-Igumbor, co-founder of the studio Dimension 11.

A worker plays a video game in Maliyo office in Lagos on January 20, 2025 In a dream, a mysterious voice calls out in the night to King Alantako, warning of "chaos" ahead for the young Nigerian sovereign. He wakes with a start -- and slot inovatif sets out on an adventure that will lead him to his destiny and save the kingdom of Ile Kaaro Oojiire. So begins The Wild Kingdoms -- a Nigerian-made video game for mobile phones, published in 2022 by the Nigerian studio Kucheza. In a gaming world dominated by US and Asian giants, it is distinguished by its setting: west Africa's Yoruba ethnic culture. To develop their nascent industry, Nigerian studios are drawing on their native traditions and "natural creativity," said Hugo Obi, the Lagos-based founder of another maker, Maliyo Games. "That ability to tell stories and to tell unique stories and to build characters and to build worlds is something that Nigeria has done very well." The sector is still in its infancy, but they see great potential in a country where 70 percent of people are aged under 30 -- and with one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. "If you look at the diversity of food as an example, the diversity of languages," Obi said, "once you then start to blend those together, you start to create new forms and new styles." - Growing Nigerian game studios - Maliyo has grown from three to 36 employees in five years, providing its own online training programme to assemble a team of developers and designers in five African countries. Maliyo Games founder Hugo Obi poses for a photograph in his office in Lagos on January 20, 2025 An Africa-wide team of 14 people worked for 14 months to bring out its mobile-phone cooking game Iwaju Rising Chef, adapted from an animated series broadcast on Disney last year. In it, the player cooks up Nigerian specialities such as jollof rice and deep-fried dough balls known as puff puffs. A survey by Maliyo found that Nigeria was the fastest-growing out of the five leading African countries in the video game sector -- the others being Algeria, Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia. Nigerian gaming revenues were "surging", the report said, from $11 million in 2019 to over $60 million in 2024. It said Nigeria was home to nearly a quarter of all the studios on the continent. - 'Creative economy' - Besides the challenge of finding trained developers, Nigerian studios also struggle to secure funding, studios complain. "Nigerians invest in real estate, Nigerians invest in oil and gas, Nigerians invest in anything tangible," said Obi of Maliyo Games. "This idea of intellectual property is something that is still very new and seen as high-risk." As well as the funding battle, developers also face patchy power and internet networks, said Ewere Ekpenisi-Igumbor, co-founder of the studio Dimension 11. His studio is developing a game in partnership with Microsoft for its Xbox console: Legends of Orisha, another title drawing on Yoruba legends. Yet he believes the country is beginning to take notice, hailing the creation in 2023 of a new ministry for culture and the "creative economy".