Nigeria's gaming studios weave quests in native culture

In a dream, a mysterious voice calls out in the night to King Alantako, warning of "chaos" ahead for the young Nigerian sovereign.

He wakes with a start -- and sets out on an adventure that will lead him to his destiny and save the kingdom of Ile Kaaro Oojiire.

So begins The Wild Kingdoms -- a Nigerian-made video game for mobile phones, published in 2022 by the Nigerian studio Kucheza.

In a gaming world dominated by US and Asian giants, it is distinguished by its setting: west Africa's Yoruba ethnic culture.

To develop their nascent industry, Nigerian studios are drawing on their native traditions and "natural creativity," said Hugo Obi, the Lagos-based founder of another maker, Maliyo Games.

"That ability to tell stories and to tell unique stories and to build characters and to build worlds is something that Nigeria has done very well."

The sector is still in its infancy, but they see great potential in a country where 70 percent of people are aged under 30 -- and with one of the fastest-growing populations in the world.

"If you look at the diversity of food as an example, the diversity of languages," Obi said, "once you then start to blend those together, you start to create new forms and new styles."

Growing Nigerian game studios

Maliyo has grown from three to 36 employees in five years, providing its own online training programme to assemble a team of developers and designers in five African countries.

Maliyo Games founder Hugo Obi poses for a photograph in his office in Lagos on January 20, 2025. By OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT (AFP)

An Africa-wide team of 14 people worked for 14 months to bring out its mobile-phone cooking game Iwaju Rising Chef, adapted from an animated series broadcast on Disney last year.

In it, the player cooks up Nigerian specialities such as jollof rice and deep-fried dough balls known as puff puffs.

A survey by Maliyo found that Nigeria was the fastest-growing out of the five leading African countries in the video game sector -- the others being Algeria, Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia.

Nigerian gaming revenues were "surging", the report said, from $11 million in 2019 to over $60 million in 2024.

It said Nigeria was home to nearly a quarter of all the studios on the continent.

'Creative economy'

Besides the challenge of finding trained developers, Nigerian studios also struggle to secure funding, studios complain.

"Nigerians invest in real estate, Nigerians invest in oil and gas, Nigerians invest in anything tangible," said Obi of Maliyo Games.

"This idea of intellectual property is something that is still very new and seen as high-risk."

As well as the funding battle, developers also face patchy power and internet networks, said Ewere Ekpenisi-Igumbor, co-founder of the studio Dimension 11.

His studio is developing a game in partnership with Microsoft for its Xbox console: Legends of Orisha, another title drawing on Yoruba legends.

Yet he believes the country is beginning to take notice, hailing the creation in 2023 of a new ministry for culture and the "creative economy".

"Historically, the government wasn't as involved or even aware of the industry," he said. "But things are changing now."

Low domestic game demand

"Nigeria is arguably the second or third largest country for game development" on the continent, said Vic Bassey, founder of the specialist website Games Industry Africa.

A worker types on her computer in Maliyo office in Lagos on January 20, 2025. By OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT (AFP)

But its share of global production is "less than 0.5 percent", he added -- and although it makes a lot of games, relatively few people in the country can afford to buy them.

The Wild Kingdoms has seen its biggest share of downloads in Brazil, said Bukola Akingbade, founder of Kucheza, the studio that developed it.

The Latin American nation is home to a Yoruba spiritual tradition dating back centuries to the time of the slave trade.

David Tomide, a 29-year-old who calls himself "the first gamer influencer in Nigeria", looks to youngsters as a source of hope for the sector, with "Generation Alpha" teenagers "always wanting to be on their phone".

"Most of the games that we play here in Nigeria are not Nigerian-made," he said.

But "if I see a good Nigerian game that tells a good story, I'll play it on stream."