The iGaming landscape in South Africa has changed incredibly over the past five years. Where people in that country were confining their iGaming activities to relatively unengaging games from outside the country on computers or consoles at local gaming emporiums or cybercafé locations away from their homes, smartphones have completely changed iGaming activities there.
With the impact the smartphone has had as the new go-to device for gaming, this means people are no longer confined to gaming emporiums and cyber cafés. South Africans are now relishing their new pocketable ‘games consoles’. And added to this, game developers have begun adding identifiable South African features, languages, and stage characters to the games.
The number of iGamers in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 77 million in 2015 to 186 million people today, according to a 2021 study commissioned by Newzoo. South Africa, with 24 million gamers leads the continent with 40% of the population playing games, the majority (95%) of whom are using their mobiles (Ghana is in second place with 27% and Nigeria in third places with 23%). The gamers in South Africa are particularly attracted to free-to-play gaming that provides the option of in-game purchases.
Meanwhile, over 75% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa now own smartphones. This is predominantly because of mobile technology achieving what traditional telephones and internet cabling has been unable to achieve. The cost of installation relative to the distances involved with smaller populations lying well outside the major conurbations have contributed to mobile device proliferation.
With the enormous increases in mobile phone usage in South Africa, there is now a technological miracle underway in the country. You may have read that because of this, mobile banking, which lagged far behind other countries of the world, now sees an astounding 50% of the world’s mobile payments being made just in Africa!
Mobile gaming (examples being Candy Crush Saga, Roblox, and Gardenscape), gambling (for example Dunder online casino), social media (WhattsApp being the most popular) and online shopping brands (for example Takealot and Shein) are all demonstrating phenomenal growth and adoption across mobile platforms. And the number of local game developers is also now mushrooming as a result.
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However, it’s mobile gaming that is certainly set to see further great growth, as gaming crosses the entire age spectrum, that is, ‘children from 9 to 99’, so this further confirms South Africa is a developer’s heaven. Smartphones, though their increased affordability, are helping the market to grow. The main telecommunication providers are increasingly seeing gaming as a vital part of their offering on digital platforms, with providers such as MTN (Africa’s largest mobile network operator) very quickly responding to demand and providing smartphone users with a host of games for a relatively small and affordable subscription.
Small communities of iGamers are springing up all over the country, supported by expositions and tournaments which introduce iGaming to game lovers nationwide. These communities are growing and are without doubt a very valuable source of income that must be taken notice of, and there can be no doubt that many more companies won’t take long to notice the potential they can gain by entering the South African market with their games.