"Ads remain the most common and viable monetisation model across Africa's gaming markets today"

• Monetisation in Africa is not broken, but the infrastructure that supports it still is.
• Ads remain the most reliable revenue model for mobile game developers across African markets.
• Many studios misread the market by assuming demand exists at a scale that does not yet exist.
• African gamers compare local titles to global standards, not local expectations.
• Most African consumers prioritise survival and income generation before spending on games.

Many developers looking at Africa still approach the market with assumptions shaped by more mature regions. In reality, growth is shaped less by theory and more by infrastructure, purchasing power and the everyday trade-offs players make.

To understand how those dynamics are playing out on the ground, we spoke with Africacomicade founder Michael Oscar Esio about what is actually driving revenue today, where expectations often miss the mark and what needs to change for the market to scale.

This interview is part of the ongoing debate in Africa's games industry on monetisation and which platforms offer the best opportunities. This was sparked by our interview with Masseka Game Studio founder Teddy Kossoko, who shared his views on the challenges of monetising players in the region.

PocketGamer.biz: You’ve previously acknowledged structural monetisation constraints in Africa. From your perspective, what are the three biggest blockers today? 

Michael Oscar Esio: When you look into the African video games industry, what you will mostly hear is that there is no means for Africans to pay for their favourite games, local pricing options or for African game devs to monetise their games locally. This viewpoint would stand 100% correct if we were still five to 10 years ago. 

Access to payment infrastructure has improved significantly over the past decade due to the growth of fintech solutions with the likes of Carry1st and Gara in the games industry. The average African consumer, however, still prioritises survival, income generation means and free entertainment, limiting disposable spending on games. 

The demand for locally developed games exists but has not yet reached the scale required to drive major investment in monetisation infrastructure. In addition, Africa remains a highly fragmented market, with differing currencies, regulations and economic realities across neighbouring countries.

This makes scalable, cross-border monetisation complex and costly, forcing stakeholders to rely on multiple partnerships and integrations to reach users across regions. Finally, there is a persistent mismatch between the games that many African developers are building and what players are willing to pay for.

African gamers have global tastes and assess games against international quality standards, unlike in film or other creative media, where local standards are accepted, but much of the local output in games does not yet meet these expectations. Until demand matures, markets become more interoperable and product quality aligns more closely with player preferences, monetisation across the continent will remain constrained. 

Talk to us about monetisation. Do you believe games monetisation in Africa is fundamentally broken, or simply misunderstood? 

I don’t believe game monetisation in Africa is fundamentally broken. Rather, what is broken are the broader infrastructural systems and interconnectivity that monetisation depends on. As a result, private stakeholders are often forced to compensate for gaps in public infrastructure and policy. 

The challenges facing the African games industry are therefore largely inherited from wider socio-economic conditions, not created by the industry itself. If governments were to more effectively address core socio-economic issues, youth spending power and participation in gaming would grow much faster. Improved regional interconnectivity and policy alignment would also help unlock and consolidate markets, making cross-border monetisation more viable. 

In such an environment, African game developers would gain greater access to learning opportunities, collaboration, co-production and investment, ultimately enabling the continent to claim a more meaningful share of the global games industry. At present, many private actors are required to secure private funding to solve social and structural problems before they can unlock commercial opportunities. 

This is not unique to gaming; it affects the broader African creative economy as well. Consequently, stakeholders with limited patience for long return-on-investment cycles often take a pragmatic approach: they build for global markets while contributing to local ecosystem development where possible.

This is an approach that may appear counterintuitive, especially as the global economy increasingly looks to Africa both as a source of new content and as an emerging consumer market. 

Monetisation in Africa works in practice. Companies like Carry1st demonstrate that, with the right resources, structure and strategy, global games can be successfully distributed and monetised across the continent. The issue, therefore, is less about broken monetisation and more about misunderstood context, constraints and missing infrastructure. 

You mentioned that the PC segment faces equal or even greater systemic limitations. Can you give us some examples from markets you operate in? 

The limitations of the PC segment in African markets are relatively straightforward to identify. Africa does not yet have a strong indie PC gaming audience. Multiple reports have already established that the continent is mobile-first, driven by accessibility, affordability and infrastructure realities.

When you examine the comparatively small PC gaming audience, you find that consumption is largely centred on competitive multiplayer titles or established triple-A games. 

On the continent, indie PC games, by contrast, are mostly played by geeks/developers/creatives (especially African game developers themselves).

While there is a slowly growing audience beyond developers, the numbers remain too small to meaningfully influence market sizing or investment decisions at scale. It is also easy to misread the market when operating within a bubble defined by personal access and professional networks. 

However, when viewed from the broader consumer landscape, demand for indie PC games remains limited. This is particularly important because Africa currently does not host a triple-A game studio, not only due to capital constraints, but also because of gaps in talent, production experience, execution systems and long-term studio maturity.

These structural realities shape both supply and demand in the PC segment. Esports offers another practical illustration. Across much of the continent, esports activity is predominantly focused on mobile titles.

Where PC esports events do exist, organisers are often required to provide nearly all hardware and infrastructure themselves, with minimal community contribution. This is not due to a lack of interest, but rather an indicator of limited purchasing power and access.

Even when laptops are considered, a majority are business or media-consumption devices not optimised for gaming, further reinforcing how early-stage and fragile the PC ecosystem still is.

This does not mean the PC market should be ignored. Rather, it requires a clear-eyed understanding from investors and stakeholders. Entering this segment demands patient capital, long-term thinking and deliberate investment in systems, talent development and market education.

Without these, there will be many failed attempts, which will later often be misinterpreted as proof that the market is “dead” or “non-viable”, which is both inaccurate and unfair.

Success in African PC gaming, as in any emerging market, depends on deploying the right resources and strategies first. Only after those fundamentals are genuinely in place can outcomes be judged with credibility. 

It’s often said that most Africans don’t pay for entertainment, including games. In your view, what monetisation models are actually working in practice today? 

In practice, ads remain the most common and viable monetisation model across African gaming markets today. To date, I am not aware of any studios that have sustainably survived on subscriptions alone. Ads dominate largely because they align with prevailing consumer behaviour, even though eCPMs remain relatively low.

This challenge is not unique to gaming; it cuts across other creative industries on the continent as well. Paid games, on the other hand, have not demonstrated consistent success in the African market, even when launches are supported by well-known studios, strong PR, or international visibility. Similarly, in-app purchases have yet to be fully figured out at scale, with adoption remaining limited and uneven across regions. 

As a result, for mobile game developers in Africa, in-app ads continue to be the most reliable option for generating revenue in the short to medium-term.

PC developers operate under a different dynamic, where monetisation is primarily driven by outright sales on publishing platforms such as Steam, Epic Games Store and Xbox. These models rely less on local purchasing behaviour and more on accessing global audiences from day one. 

Can ad revenue provide sustainable returns in Africa’s gaming market, where in-app purchases struggle to convert? 

Yes, ad revenue can provide sustainable returns, but only if developers are targeting a global market rather than relying solely on local audiences.

In that context, the primary remaining challenge is not monetisation itself, but the ability to manage and scale user acquisition costs effectively, which ultimately determines long-term viability and profitability. 

Beyond payments, you’ve suggested that some of the games being developed may not be well aligned with the market. Do you think we’re producing enough locally made games that players truly feel are worth paying for? 

While the most accurate answers would come directly from players, my perspective is that we are not producing enough games in the first place.

By conservative estimates, the continent releases fewer than 30 games annually, which is extremely low when you consider a population of over one billion people and a global market where tens of thousands of games are published on platforms like Google Play each year. 

At that scale, there is very little competitive pressure or incentive to truly compete on visibility, quality, innovation or market fit. This limited output is closely tied to structural constraints such as funding gaps, skills shortages, and weak production pipelines, which in turn reduce experimentation and creative risk-taking.

As a result, developers tend to cluster around a narrow set of genres over time - moving from endless runners, to match-three games and more recently to side-scrolling platformers - rather than exploring a broader range of mechanics, formats and player experiences. 

In addition, there is minimal exploration of emerging publishing channels such as TikTok or Telegram games and most studios lack the marketing budgets required to achieve meaningful visibility. Collectively, these factors slow growth and make it difficult to consistently produce locally made games that players perceive as truly worth paying for. 

If you had to choose today, and regardless of quality, would you bet on mobile or PC for sustainable revenue in Africa, and why? 

I would bet on a hybrid approach over time, but I would start with mobile for sustainability. Beyond funding constraints, the core issue is capacity and expertise.

We currently lack sufficient talent that has completed and successfully launched games, let alone PC titles, and I strongly believe that in the games industry, capability is built through repeated execution. 

Except for a small few, Most studios do not yet have the systems, pipelines or structures needed for rapid prototyping, iteration and publishing, nor do we have strong coverage across the full game development value chain.

Mobile provides a more accessible environment to build this foundation: teams can gain hands-on experience, establish workflows, grow communities locally and internationally, build brands and learn what it means to ship consistently. 

Once that capacity is in place, studios can more confidently expand into PC. The creativity, stories and narratives already exist; what is needed now is a deliberate, long-term strategy that prioritises sustainable growth over rushing, burnout or chasing one-hit successes.