Notes From the Gaming Conference Circuit in East & Southern Africa

There's a regional games industry taking shape across East and Southern Africa, and it's being built the way most durable industries are — through unglamorous, recurring events rather than a single breakout studio.

What's actually working

Local Google Developer Groups and IGDA chapters running consistent meetups have done more for the talent pipeline than any single funding announcement. Studio-to-studio partnerships across countries — co-hosting workshops, cross-crediting jams — are stitching together an audience and a talent pool that no single city has on its own.

Where the gaps still are

Publishing and distribution are still the weak link. There's real strength in production talent — engineering, art, design — but far fewer people with hands-on experience getting a title through platform certification, live-ops, or a global marketing push. That's the skill gap worth investing in next, and it's a more tractable problem than it looks: it's mentorship and playbooks, not infrastructure.

Worth watching

Esports and AR/lens creator communities are growing alongside traditional game dev, and cross-pollinating faster than I expected — a lens creator picking up Unity, a gameplay programmer prototyping a Snap experience on the side. If the region's games industry ends up looking distinct from the US/EU model, it'll probably be because of that blending rather than in spite of it.