As a tech innovator living in the UK on a Skilled Worker Visa, I set out to bring the vibrant traditions of African gaming to a global audience through a mobile gamestore app featuring four indigenous African games: Ludo, Whot, Draught, and ElewenJewe (African Go-Fishing), and more with time. These games, deeply rooted in African cultural practices, are more than entertainment; they embody strategy, community, and heritage. My app, equipped with multiplayer and tournament features, delivers fun while empowering users by fostering cultural pride and creating economic opportunities. I started this project in 2019. Building this platform for Sub-Saharan Africa, where infrastructure challenges are ever-present, was a formidable task. My journey offers a case study in resilience, innovation, and the transformative power of digital technology against the odds.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, developing a mobile game app is a test of endurance. Unreliable electricity, limited internet access, and scarce funding for tech startups are daily realities. During the app’s development, I faced frequent power outages that disrupted coding and relied on expensive mobile data in areas where broadband was unavailable. The International Telecommunication Union reported in 2022 that only 29% of Sub-Saharan Africans had internet access, compared to 66% globally. This digital divide demanded a lean app design, optimised for low-end devices and unstable networks, shaping the app’s lightweight structure and offline play options.

Despite these challenges, the region’s mobile boom provided opportunity. With over 500 million mobile users in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2023, according to GSMA, smartphones are a powerful tool for cultural and economic empowerment. My app harnesses this by transforming beloved games into digital experiences for local players and Africans in the diaspora. Ludo, a staple in Nigerian households, teaches strategic planning, while Whot, a fast-paced card game, sparks joy and competition. Draught, a checkers variant, and ElewenJewe, a go-fishing-inspired strategy card game, all connect players to ancestral traditions.

The gamestore app has three modes: Fun, Challenge, and Tournament. The Fun mode is free, where you play with computers of different skill levels like Easy, Medium, and Hard. The Challenge mode is where you create a room with some fee, or invite your friend to stake some amount and challenge each other. Whoever wins takes the combined stake amount from both players. The Tournament mode is where people join a monthly event of different games. Each game has tiers with different registration fees and winning amounts.

The multiplayer mode comes in the Challenge mode, which allows users in Lagos, Accra, or London to compete, recreating the communal spirit of village gatherings in a digital space. The tournament feature is the app’s heartbeat, blending fun with empowerment. Inspired by the social nature of African games, I introduced monthly virtual tournaments with cash rewards, with the top three on the leaderboard taking home a great sum of money that can transform their lives based on the tournament tiers they registered for.

Developing this solution from 2019 till today, I faced a lot of challenges. The first is financial. Unlike tech hubs with abundant venture capital, African startups often rely on personal funds or small grants. For this project, I didn’t get any, so I relied on personal funds and friends’ investment. I bootstrapped the project with my savings and salary from my main job, a common path for African innovators. The lack of local server infrastructure meant using costly foreign cloud services, increasing latency and expenses. Yet, these constraints fueled ingenuity—optimising the app for low-bandwidth environments and leveraging open-source tools to reduce costs. Another challenge is the very low number of competent game developers in Africa. I searched for collaborators from more than five African countries online, LinkedIn, and developer networks, but I could not find any, so I had to invite some developers from Punjab in India. We worked together for about three years until COVID-19 hit India badly, and we had to part ways due to the inconsistencies caused by COVID and its aftermath.

These games carry profound cultural weight. In a gaming industry dominated by Western titles, African traditions like Whot and Draught risk fading. My app counters this by digitising and globalising these games, ensuring their survival. For the African diaspora in the UK, where I now reside, the app is a cultural lifeline. A London-based Nigerian player shared how playing Whot online rekindled memories of family game nights, underscoring the app’s role in fostering belonging.

My journey is one of overcoming finance, scarcity of game developers, and many other challenges to transform cultural gems into global innovations. As I continue this work, I invite the world to play Ludo, Whot, Draught, and ElewenJewe—connecting communities and empowering lives through the timeless wisdom of African games, proving that creativity thrives even in the toughest conditions.