Business
Nigeria seeks to create video games which will dominate Africa’s smart phones
“Mobile is massive in this part of the world. It has the highest penetration, especially for internet users. And we are exporting a lot of our games onto mobiles,” Maliyo’s Mr Obi said. Figures clearly show the trend in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 170-million residents and nearly 100-million mobile phone users in 2012.
In 2011, it is estimated that 46-million people used the internet, up from 2008 when there were only 11-million internet users. Mr Obi, who invented Mosquito Smasher, spent 10 years in the UK running a recruitment company before returning home in 2012 to set up his online games company.
To share Nigeria’s high operating costs, with daily power cuts the norm and investment in diesel-powered generators a must, his five-member firm shares work space with eight other companies. From an office in the Lagos suburb of Yaba, Maliyo now offers 10 free online games to about 20,000 users across Nigeria but also in the UK and the US.
It is preparing to launch smartphone versions of its most popular games. Kuluya, meanwhile, started with an investment of $250,000 but is now worth an estimated $2 million and employs about a dozen people in its Lagos office. Sitting behind large Apple Mac screens and armed with giant tablets and light pens, the creative team, all Nigerian, find inspiration from what dominates their daily life but also comb the web for information about other African countries.
Along with the typically Nigerian games, the company’s catalog now includes nods to Kenyan culture with the game Masai and another called Matatus, which features the minibuses that travel around Nairobi. Its game called Zulu, meanwhile, has clear references to South Africa.
For the moment, Kuluya, which is seeking new investment, earns little money from advertising. Maliyo, for its part, funds itself by creating games for businesses. The next stage for Kuluya is to introduce payment by SMS for more sophisticated versions of its games.
Copyright Business Day Live 2014
