Africa’s monetisation debate: founders weigh in on mobile, PC, and the realities of game revenue

• African founders say the continent’s mobile gaming market is not broken, but constrained by payments, purchasing power, and infrastructure gaps.
• Rewarded video ads remain the most reliable monetisation model for many African mobile game developers
• Lower ad rates in African markets mean studios need significantly higher user volumes to generate sustainable revenue.
• While PC players may spend more per transaction, founders argue the continent’s PC gaming audience remains relatively small.

As Africa’s games industry continues to expand, questions around monetisation are becoming increasingly urgent for developers across the continent.

Mobile gaming is widely viewed as the region’s primary growth engine, driven by high smartphone penetration and a player base that overwhelmingly engages through handheld devices. Yet turning that scale into sustainable revenue remains a persistent challenge.

Recent commentary suggesting that PC gaming could offer a more sustainable path sparks debate among developers, raising broader questions about purchasing power, payment infrastructure, and the business models best suited to African markets.

To better understand the issue, we speak with founders across the continent to gather their perspectives on whether monetisation challenges stem from structural limitations or from execution, strategy, and market understanding.

Structural realities meet execution challenges

Many founders agree that monetising games in Africa comes with structural challenges, but they caution against framing the market as fundamentally broken. For Maliyo Games founder Hugo Obi, the difficulties reflect a combination of economic realities and an ecosystem that is still maturing.

“I don’t believe the African mobile gaming market is structurally broken,” Obi says. “Mobile game monetisation is challenging globally, but those challenges are amplified in Africa due to lower purchasing power and payment constraints.”

However, Obi believes execution and business model design also play a major role in determining whether games succeed commercially.

“We still have work to do around product stickiness, pricing architecture, payment integration, and long-term player engagement strategies,” he explains. “The ecosystem simply hasn’t matured enough for us to conclude that the market itself doesn’t work.”

FitNot Games founder Abdallah Elshabrawy echoes this mixed perspective, arguing that structural barriers and execution issues often intersect.

“I believe it is both, but they’re not equal problems,” Elshabrawy says. “The structural constraints are real and specific: Western ad networks that don’t price African users fairly, currency volatility that squeezes margins when your costs are in dollars but your revenue isn’t, and payment systems built around credit cards in markets where most people don’t have one.”

At the same time, he argues that many studios underestimate the importance of proper monetisation design.

“Studios targeting this market often miss a proper ad setup, no systems to bring players back, no pricing adjusted for local incomes,” he says. “The game isn’t ready to make money even when players show up. That’s not the market failing. That’s the studio failing.”

Ads dominate Africa’s current monetisation landscape

One of the clearest points of consensus among founders is that advertising remains the most reliable revenue model for mobile games across Africa today. According to Obi, ad-supported monetisation aligns more closely with current economic realities in many markets.

“In practice, ad-supported models are currently the most reliable revenue driver, particularly rewarded video ads,” he says. “They allow users to ‘pay with attention’ rather than cash, which aligns better with current economic realities.”

While advertising revenue may not yet match mature markets in terms of average revenue per user, Obi believes it can still deliver meaningful returns when combined with strong player retention.

“The key is creative monetisation design,” he says. “Blending ads, light in-app purchases, sponsorships, and alternative payment methods can unlock value from engaged users.”

Elshabrawy also points to rewarded video as the model that currently works most consistently across African markets.

“Rewarded video is the model that actually converts,” he says. “It’s player-initiated, requires no payment method, and generates meaningful revenue when you’ve set up proper ad mediation across multiple networks.”

However, he notes that lower advertising rates create additional scaling challenges for developers.

“African traffic commands substantially lower eCPMs than Tier 1 markets, which means you need far more daily active users to generate the same revenue a Western audience game produces at equivalent scale.”

For many studios, reaching that level of scale remains difficult. “Most studios won’t get there,” Elshabrawy adds, “and the ones that do didn’t get there by accident.”

Africacomicade founder Michael Oscar Esio also identifies advertising as the dominant monetisation approach across African markets.

“In practice, ads remain the most common and viable monetisation model across African gaming markets today,” he says. “To date, I am not aware of any studios that have sustainably survived on subscriptions alone.”

However, Esio notes that advertising’s dominance reflects broader consumer behaviour patterns rather than an inherent limitation of the games industry itself.

“Ads dominate largely because they align with prevailing consumer behaviour, even though eCPMs remain relatively low,” he explains. “This challenge is not unique to gaming; it cuts across other creative industries on the continent as well.”

The purchasing power debate: mobile reach versus PC spending

The debate around monetisation has recently intensified following arguments that PC gaming could offer stronger revenue potential due to higher purchasing power among players.

However, the founders caution that this perspective overlooks the scale advantages of mobile gaming. For Obi, the two platforms serve fundamentally different audiences and use cases.

“The PC and mobile markets serve fundamentally different audiences, especially in Africa,” he says. “While PC users may have higher purchasing power on average, the addressable market is significantly smaller.”

Mobile, by contrast, offers far greater reach and accessibility.

“Mobile offers unmatched reach and accessibility,” Obi adds. “It fits seamlessly into everyday life. People are mobile-first, always connected, and often on the move.”

Elshabrawy takes a similar view, arguing that the PC market remains relatively small within Africa’s broader gaming ecosystem.

“Mobile accounts for around 87% of African gamers and roughly 90% of gaming revenue,” he says. “The PC market in Africa is a niche within a niche.”

Even when PC games generate higher spending per transaction, discovery and distribution challenges remain significant barriers.

“PC distribution means competing for discovery on Steam against global studios with marketing budgets that dwarf anything an Africa-based indie can deploy,” Elshabrawy explains. “That's a structural disadvantage that exists regardless of piracy rates.”

Building for global markets

Another recurring theme among founders is the importance of targeting global audiences rather than relying solely on local markets. Deluxe Creation CEO Edu Shola says international players often drive the majority of revenue for African-developed mobile games.

“Our game Stickman Magic Brawl did 95% of its 300,000 downloads outside the continent,” Shola says. “That’s why it’s one of our best titles revenue-wise.” He adds: “I don’t think revenue should be limited to Africa if the developer or studio is serious about revenue.”

Esio agrees that global distribution plays a key role in enabling sustainable monetisation.

“Monetisation in Africa works in practice,” he says. “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.”

Payments and local market complexity

Several founders also emphasise that Africa’s gaming market cannot be treated as a single economic environment. However, Kiro’o Games CEO Olivier Madiba argues that monetisation strategies must account for the continent’s diverse payment ecosystems and cultural dynamics.

“African mobile monetisation is not a whole market,” he says. “You have to divide it into subregions with different realities.”

For example, monetisation behaviour differs significantly between regions where mobile money dominates and markets where card payments are more common. Madiba believes studios must design flexible monetisation systems capable of adapting to these regional differences.

“You must build your own monetisation layer fluidly enough to show the right price and payment method to the right players,” he explains. “The good news is: most of the global gaming actors will fear this hard work, so if you succeed in it, you have a little monopoly easier to keep than fighting the global stages.”

Beyond technical infrastructure, Madiba argues that sociological understanding plays an equally important role.

“In Africa, you have to look into sociology to identify the right monetisation hack,” he says. “And don’t make the mistake of ordering social studies from Western experts; they will serve you a list of cliches that will fail to scale. Only local studios and local actors can execute it for you. This is an opportunity to win where everyone will lose.”

A hybrid future for Africa’s games industry

While the debate around mobile versus PC continues, some founders ultimately see the future of monetisation in Africa as a hybrid landscape. Esio believes mobile development remains the most practical starting point for most studios, particularly given current industry capacity and talent constraints.

“Mobile provides a more accessible environment to build this foundation,” he says. “Teams can gain hands-on experience, establish workflows, grow communities, and learn what it means to ship consistently.”

Once those capabilities are established, studios can expand into other platforms with greater confidence.

“The creativity, stories, and narratives already exist,” Esio adds. “What is needed now is a deliberate, long-term strategy that prioritises sustainable growth.”

As the continent’s games industry continues to mature, developers may find that sustainable revenue lies not in choosing between mobile or PC, but in learning how to navigate both within Africa’s uniquely complex gaming ecosystem.