Video games in Kenya

Though various start-up companies have appeared in the country since 2007, the existing businesses are dealing with funding issues and few successes have been made.

However, shared spaces, support programs and government grants introduced over the past few years have allowed the industry to grow large in a short period of time.

The introduction of broadband internet in 2009 spawned a generation of young ICT savvy people in the country and the Kenyan game industry is as of 2015 among the largest in Africa.

[1] Masyuko met Anne Shongwe, who had created Afroes, a business which had developed award-winning games for mobile telephones in Kenya and South Africa.

They were joined by Kirinya and Chief Nyamweya in developing Haki: Shield & Defend, an Android game reaching 250,000 downloads and winning a World Youth Summit Award, which Masyuko collected in Montreal in 2012.

[2] Though in 2007, there existed only a handful of retail stores predominantly selling video games, this number has gone up in recent years.

Various other businesses followed suit, supporting start-up companies "through a mix of entrepreneurship training, research, funding, working spaces and mentoring."

[4] The game, a first-person shooter, achieved a large amount of international coverage due to its high graphical quality, and was released for PC and Android devices.

Despite these plans, unemployment is common in Kenya, and a failed ICT project could leave a young person without a job to fall back on.

An issue faced by ICT entrepreneurs is that gaming is not taken seriously by the general public, making it difficult to find financial support.

Rental video games [18] companies and business are seen emerging and opportunity like these encourage gamers to keep on playing.

Companies such as Happy Wishy, Jumia and Pick and drop occasionally hold short PlayStation and Xbox tournaments in Kenya.

[1][9] Leti Arts commonly does contract development for serious games, usually for companies that are interested in educating their employees or creating learning tools.