"After our five years of tests, we think only hybrid monetisation will work in Africa"

• Africa’s mobile monetisation is not one market but a patchwork of payment habits, income levels and player behaviours.
• Success in African game monetisation depends as much on sociology as on data analytics or market sizing.
• Hybrid monetisation models combining in-app purchases and advertising are emerging as the only sustainable path for many African studios.

For many game studios entering Africa, the biggest mistake is assuming the continent behaves like a conventional market. In practice, success depends less on raw data and more on understanding how people actually pay, play and spend.

To unpack what that looks like in practice, we caught up with the Kiro'o Games CEO Olivier Madiba to examine what is working, what is failing and where the real opportunities lie.

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: Do you believe mobile gaming monetisation in Africa is structurally struggling,or is the problem more about execution and business model? 

Olivier Madiba: In fact, it’s a little bit of all that; the challenges and opportunities for monetising in Africa are not monolithic. You must see it like a mosaic. Africa’s mobile monetisation is not a whole market; you have to divide it into sub-regions with different realities.

For example you have South African and the North African region where monetisation is already “standardised”, but in the sub-Saharan region, you also have to separate regions with Mobile Money from regions where people are already used to paying with Visa cards.

You must build your own monetisation layer “fluidly” enough to show the right price and right payment method to the right players. I think only Kiroo and Gara have done it? The good news is that 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.

Execution and business model: When you make market studies to launch a mobile game in the US, you mainly just look at numbers to identify the right trends. In Africa, you will have to look into sociology to identify the right monetisation hack. 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.

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? And can ad revenue provide sustainable returns where in-app purchases struggle to convert? 

About Africans not paying for entertainment, if it were true, then all the drink and telco industries would not make so much money. Africans use the internet 90% for entertaining online. Africans will pay for games they love if the price and pay method fit them. 

We have established that. In our test phase, we made 4,300 IAP successful transactions with 1600 unique “mobile payers” in Cameroon and Ivory Coast with Mobile Money. This showed that “mobile payers” in Africa paid 2.6 times in average, with our unfinished games and with mobile money IAP tech. And the average revenue per payment is $1.8 so far from our test (with unfinished games).

They wanted to pay more, but our games were still prototypes. And again, it’s a matter of sociology: You must understand which demography has money today in Africa and what type of game they want to play and why (based on their sociology, not data only). 

About the ads and monetisation that will work, after our five years of tests, we think only hybrid monetisation will work here. Ads only can’t pay back the UA budget. IAP has to be the core (with Mobile Money payment methods and classic ones). VIP Pass for whale players. Also, you have to integrate some sociology hacks. 

I will give one example we are the only ones to know: Never give premium currencies for free to African players, they have too much hope and time, and they can wait eight months to get another one free. They will never pay if their brain knows free is possible. This is something data will not show you, but only sociology will. Offer other currencies, but never premium. 

Is the “PC has higher purchasing power than mobile” argument convincing to you or does it ignore scalability constraints? 

If you do marketing right, you can make faster money in the niche of PC gamers in Africa in some special regions (South Africa and North Africa). But the scalability is definitely in mobile without any question for me. Now, not all businesses need scalability; being profitable is good enough and PC can provide that if executed well. 

This was not true 12 years ago because of the sociology: African players born in the 2000s are starting to earn money and they play more on PC than the other generations. 

What are the biggest monetisation blockers you face in your market: payments, ARPU, retention, CAC, ad revenue or something else? 

Personally, and I speak just for us: we “cracked” the monetisation, acquisition and retention code in the African audience. It took us nearly five years of market testing, sociology observations and technology layers to build. With only 3% (two hour playtime) of our current game Elites of Mboa, we already make 22% of client LTV objectives by Mobile Money in-app purchase. 

Our main challenge today is to fund and finish our game to add playtime. And the funding equation in the current global crisis is the ultimate struggle for African studios. And yes, we identified the elements to build repeatable success for our next projects. 

Do you think Africa’s mobile gaming revenue is overstated because of betting and gambling being grouped into broader industry figures? 

Africa’s mobile games market is not a Formula 1; it is Paris-Dakar. If you bring the Ferrari Formula 1 car here, it crashes, and it’s not because the “market is bad”, but you used the wrong car for the wrong road type. I don’t know if the current numbers blend betting; I think not, but I don’t have a source for it. I think most of the real market is still dormant.

If you judge the market only with current data without the sociology, you miss 80% of the real value. The biggest markets for players are not in the offices; they are motor drivers, taxi drivers and shopkeepers in the informal economy. They don’t have a cinema, they don’t have concerts, they don’t have travels - they mainly have smartphones to have fun. 

They don’t buy big data to stream nonstop on Netflix, so what do they do offline? They can only play. And there is the honey spot: “How do you monetise offline players in mobile?” Kiro’o Games may have found a possible way (only possible in Africa) and we will keep the industry posted about it in future months. 

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 think for the PC market, if you create and own a very good database of 100K+ PC owners, you can make something big. Also, if you can secure great publisher deals for your PC game in the US, you can get huge money for your studio. But there is a market window to make $100m per year in Africa that is possible only with mobile. 

This requires more work and more risks, but the reward is worthy and that’s Kiro’o Games' choice. There is no good or  bad way, there is the way that's coherent with your studio's objectives.

This relies a lot on 'why are you making games?' For creativity? For money? For legacy? For all that? Every studio has to pick the right strategy according to its answers. At Kiro’o, we want all.