Plan for South Africa to increase its slice of R7 billion industry
MultiChoice-backed ITThynk aims to give South Africa’s R7 billion gaming industry a shot in the arm through an incubator programme designed to help smaller studios get off the ground.
While gaming has become one of the country’s fastest-growing sectors in recent years, most of its value goes towards offshore developers and publishers.
This leaves little financial opportunity for the country’s local studios, something which the industry’s key players are hoping to change.
ITThynk Gaming CEO Raymond Ledwaba said in an interview on 702 that the industry has significant potential but is held back by several factors.
Ledwaba explained that Africa accounts for less than 1% of all game developers worldwide, despite being home to the second-largest population of gamers, alongside the Middle East.
“That tells me that we are consumers in this space, but we do not produce video games,” Ledwaba said. “So I went into games with the intention of building African-inspired video games.”
“I saw a gap in the market, which is the ability for us to tell our own stories and have our kids play video games made locally.”
Ledwaba hopes to create a platform to encourage young people across the African continent to turn their passion for gaming into a viable career.
This has its challenges, however, mainly because of the perception in South Africa that video games do not offer viable job opportunities.
Only a select few development studios in South Africa can sustainably develop games for profit, while smaller developers do so as a hobby or secondary source of income.
ITThynk Gaming aims to assist these smaller studios through its incubation programme, providing them with the funding, training, equipment, and space they need.
“We’ve met with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, and we’ve sold them the importance of video games as a job creation force,” Ledwaba said.
“There is an advisory committee that we have set up with the Department to look into this problem of how we can build a thriving ecosystem for video game producers.”
Building a local gaming industry
Ledwaba is just one of numerous industry participants looking to create a viable gaming ecosystem in the country.
Over the last decade, the interest in South Africa’s gaming industry from both local and international players has grown exponentially.
Higher education institutions across the country now offer specialised courses and degrees in game-related fields, such as the University of the Witwatersrand’s Digital Arts programme.
Graduates of these programmes can then be funnelled into an incubator, such as those offered by ITThynk Gaming or the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct.
Through their various partnerships, these incubators provide the mentorship and resources needed to get these small developers off the ground.
There are also events such as Africa Games Week (AGW), which aim to showcase Africa’s potential as a gaming hub by connecting local developers with industry veterans through B2B partnerships.
AGW has partnered with global industry giants since its inaugural conference in 2018, including Microsoft, which worked with the event to bring its Xbox Game Camp programme to Africa.
Since the first camp in 2023, Xbox has provided dozens of studios across the African continent with not only the tools and training to create their games, but also the networking to publish their own IPs.
Despite clear interest in building the local gaming ecosystem, South Africa’s industry is still only a fraction of a much larger, highly competitive global market.
“Three billion people play video games,” Ledwaba explained. “If you look at the commercial value of revenue generated in this industry, it’s north of $200 billion.”
Few South African developers have found great commercial success so far, with Cape Town’s Free Lives being the clearest example of sustained local success.
While South Africa’s gaming industry is still small, the rising interest, both locally and internationally, shows nascent potential for growth, which Ledwaba hopes the country can capitalise on.
“I don’t see the growth of the industry really slowing down,” Ledwaba said. “If we have the opportunity as Africans to build games that represent us, then we will definitely see growth on the African continent.”
