Maliyo Games founder Hugo Obi explains why Africa's future in games won't be built by copying the rest of the world - but by embracing its own stories, talent and identity.
By Mathias Gredal Nørvig
Recorded at the first international Games & SDG Summit in Nairobi, this conversation captures an African games industry at a pivotal moment. Across the continent, a new generation of studios is emerging with growing confidence, building businesses around cultural authenticity, mobile-first audiences and sustainable growth rather than simply replicating established models from Europe, North America or Asia.
Few people have done more to shape that journey than Hugo Obi. As Founder and CEO of Maliyo Games, he has spent more than a decade helping establish Nigeria as one of Africa's leading centres for game development while championing a pan-African approach to talent, collaboration and original intellectual property. His studio brings together developers from across the continent to create games rooted in African stories, characters and environments, designed first for African players but with global ambitions.
During our conversation, Hugo reflects on the progress Africa's games ecosystem has made over the past decade, the challenges that still hold it back, and the opportunities that could define its future. He explains why mobile is Africa's natural platform, how artificial intelligence could accelerate game development, and why distribution and investment remain critical barriers to growth.
Above all, however, he argues that Africa's greatest competitive advantage is neither technology nor capital. It is culture. In a crowded global marketplace, he believes the studios that succeed will be those that create experiences only they can make - games that reflect the continent's creativity, identity and optimism.
This interview – hosted by Mathias Gredal Nørvig, CEO of SYBO - has been edited and condensed from the original Good Game Club podcast for length and clarity.
For those who may not know Maliyo Games, tell us a little about yourself and your studio.
I run a mobile game studio called Maliyo Games. We're based in Lagos, Nigeria, but we're really a pan-African game development studio. We have talent across multiple African countries, and our ambition is to create content for players on the continent. That means cultural authenticity through the stories, the narratives, the characters and the worlds that we create. Our platform is mobile because Africa is mobile first. Around 95% of players on the continent play on mobile, so that's the best way for us to reach our audience. We build high-quality game experiences for African players, but with the goal of reaching players around the world.
Africa is incredibly diverse - how do you think about that diversity when you're building games across the continent?
Politically, Africa has 54 countries. It's a vast body of land. Flying from Lagos to Nairobi takes about five and a half hours - almost the same as flying from Lagos to London. There are over a thousand languages, multiple indigenous languages, and multiple tribes. Like vastly different from West Africa to East Africa to Southern Africa and obviously North Africa.
But when you think about gaming, there’s a commonality for gaming. When I think about gaming culture, I think that Africa in itself is very similar. In terms of the types of games that people play, I think there’s a similarity as you move from region to region, and the platforms that people play in - mobile - because of infrastructure limits that make PC and console a lot less inaccessible.
In terms of the reasons why people play, the motivation behind why people play is entertainment. It’s fun, it’s social. When you think about gaming cultures, you move from region to region, I think you meet with very similar types of people with very similar interests. That was also part of the reason why we were quite comfortable and confident to build a pan-African team. What we found was that commonality around building fun, entertaining content meant that there was fluidity in the way that people worked.
Even though their backgrounds culturally and environmentally were slightly different, they had a unified goal. So it was very easy to organise everybody around one mission. Which is creating beautiful games for audiences around us.
Where are the major gaming hotspots emerging across Africa?
When you look at GDP or population size, you’re thinking about South Africa - which is the largest economy on the continent - you’re thinking about Nigeria, which has the largest population, and then you have obviously East Africa and Kenya which is technologically advanced with [strong] mobile and internet penetration. I would say that the big three markets - excluding North Africa, because I think North Africa mirrors more of the Middle East - you’re looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, you’re looking at Nigeria, you’re looking at South Africa and you’re looking at Kenya as the three major hotspots.
Looking ahead, what do you think will define the next five to ten years for African game development?
Maybe just look backwards first, and then we can look forward. There have been a few defining factors. First of all, we have more talent. We have more experienced talent on the continent now. And that has been built up over the last five years. If we maintain that steady momentum of continuing to nurture, groom and grow talent around production, then you would start to see that catalytic effect.
What it means is that you’re not starting from that foundational level. You already have the foundation built up. Now you can pile on top. So the next generation of creators can be mentored by the ones who are already experienced.
I think infrastructure wise, I think one of the big areas that hasn't been fixed yet is around distribution. You have this talent creating great content. But in terms of getting that content in the hands of players, that's still a major pain point today. You don't have a lot, if any, breakaway successes that have 5 to 10 million downloads, that's rare. Not even spoken of. That's the spot where we are now and that's connected to investment which has also been very, very, very limited.
You would rarely find any studio that has raised up to $1 million in funding. And as you know, within this environment of building games, there's a huge capital need to sustain that effort and to be able to get games in the hands of players and take the time to refine and improve them and then obviously be able to generate returns.
Where do you see AI fitting into that picture?
Those are the key defining factors for the next era. The last thing that I think is going to be catalytic is AI. Over the last five years we've seen these teams build their expertise, build their experience, and now they can apply that knowledge and use AI to really scale their production and increase the speed with which they get products to market.
What I expect is that you would see much better quality, because some of the knowledge that was really hard to get access to is really now very much available through these AI platforms. The best teams would apply that knowledge to make much better experiences.
That tool alone is going to solve around 80 to 90% of the problems that most teams face, which is hiring experienced people. Increasing the quality of output without necessarily fundamentally changing the team structure, being able to deliver more content to market without having increasing headcount significantly. And then being able to analyse the data that they receive quite rapidly, again, without blowing up the bank.
Those are the four key pillars: the talent, distribution, investment and AI that I think is going to be defined in the next five years.
Do you think that Africa has an advantage in being both natively mobile but also natively seizing the opportunity of AI? It could leapfrog more traditional markets because it isn't tied to older ways of making games?
I think that opportunity is applicable to everyone. We're at a point where any player has pretty much the same advantage. Nobody has superiority in the use of AI currently. There hasn't been any studio that has come out and become the number one player in leveraging AI for product development and market success.
This is a new era. This is the next big event that is happening within games where there is a new piece of technology that everybody has the opportunity to learn to leverage.
The benefit that we have is that we don't have a traditional, old way of doing things that has worked for us that we can rely on now. We can ask ourselves, ‘Why should we give up on what we already know and take something new?’ So, we don't have that problem. I would imagine that the Europeans were in a very similar position with PC and console.
And then there's this new platform that they don't adopt because they are like, ‘Well, we already have strong distribution advantage. Why should we start looking at this new platform when we already have enough revenue and we already have enough audiences in this old one?’ I think that's where we are.
What we do is what is going to determine how much of it we are able to take advantage of. And that goes into this experimentation, this rapid prototyping - embracing the technology, but understanding that it requires multiple disciplines, teamwork and collaboration. Some of the studios who already have production experience I think can leverage this way better than studios who have zero experience. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the ones who don't have experience cannot come up.
[In] this new era where you have AI, the chances are much greater to produce something that is unique, that is of great quality, where you can validate pretty fast and see how the audience respond and behave - and then hopefully adapt that to them and build market success. But again, it's really organising around production and how much of that tool is leveraged.
For us as a studio, we are already in that position where we're utilising this tool and we're seeing the efficiency gains from utilising it. We are in the process of testing out how the market and audience respond to these new products in comparison to the old products that we have.
How does this new way of doing things compare to the old way of doing things? But the speed at which we're able to develop is much more rapid. It's way more efficient. The quality is way better.
The expectation is that the data and the player engagement is way better. And then it's really about how we can leverage that to then start to do more commercial oriented games.
Where do you think Africa's first blockbuster games will come from? Will they be built around local culture, or will studios try to appeal to global audiences from the outset?
If you think about the differentiator within the global marketplace, right? You have technical competencies, you have capital, you have infrastructure, access to market. It's hard for us to compete when it comes to technical competence against some of the other well-established teams. I think in terms of financial resources, it's impossible for us to compete. In terms of access to market, it's impossible for you to do that.
So, the only advantage - and you have to think about comparative advantage in this sense - is your cultural differentiation. In a crowded market the only thing that makes you stand out is how you look. That is the positioning that we need to adopt.
So how can we bring in something that provides the same technical quality that players would expect? So, you have the familiarity, but visually and maybe [in] story it looks, sounds and feels different. So that you can actually get people to say, ‘Hey, listen, what is that?’
it's very difficult for you to get people to put their heart and soul [in] if the content has no true character or meaning. But in a crowded space, if you do have deep meaning and you have true belief and conviction, you can still deliver something that is technically strong.
Then there might be a chance where it's a breakout success. It's a hit. It's a standout. For Maliyo, for instance, we try to have an art signature. We have a certain style of art that is familiar, that we continue to refine and improve, and hopefully that becomes our trademark, that becomes our identity.
How would you describe that style?
I wouldn't call it specific to Nigeria because our lead artist is Cameroonian. I think it's unique to Nigeria. We tried to embody a visual personality, which is bold, optimistic, joyful, rich and vibrant.
[We] use bold colours, so it feels relatable. It feels familiar. And we've taken a big chunk of that from Nigeria. Obviously within West Africa, there's a lot of similarities in terms of colour, style, fashion, language, and community spirit. We're taking all of the good within our society and we're trying to embody it within the characters that we create.
Who do you imagine when you think about the people playing your games?
The first thing that I think about is that the proximity between the people who are making the games and the people who are playing the games should be very short. When we make games, we do play tests at the studio. We invite people to play the different games that we're making, and we get the teams to observe their emotional response and emotional reactions.
And then we do focus groups and we ask them what they think about the game, what they liked, what they think we can do better. And that is how we gradually start to build the audience base.
We're starting to now think about organising game nights in our local communities to build gaming culture, because the gaming culture that we have today is driven by external titles, global titles. It's forcing us to engineer new features, new mechanics within our games, but also start to have conversations with our audiences.
One of your games, Safari City, also has a broader purpose. Can games encourage people to think differently about the places they live?
Safari City is about restoring an African city that's fallen into disrepair. One of the things that we're doing with that game is we're creating a city map with multiple different zones. The plan for us is to go into schools to teach urban planning. The architecture of Safari City is one that most people understand and can relate with. And by presenting to them what they see, we can show them the steps to improve it and what that looks like. The beautiful thing about games is giving people autonomy, allowing people to take control and immerse themselves. We can start to teach people about things that they can do to improve their environment.
Do you think that sense of agency inspires young people to think more actively about their own environment?
Absolutely. They've interacted with games in the past. What they haven't done is interact with games that reflect the environment within which they live in. So, the first thing is excitement. They're kind of like, ‘Wow, I recognise this space in this medium that I'm used to.’ So that's the very first step. The second step is that recognition, ‘This can be done here - people like me have this skill set to build these games. I've always wondered what it takes to make stuff like this. Now I know that if I did want to, I can.’ Then the third thing is, ‘Now I can think about pollution, drainage systems, water or security.’ You can see that those factors have been considered in the design of this experience, and you can connect with it and you can see what the final output looks like.
This could drive people to want to do urban planning or to participate in local politics.
Within a game you have agency, you can change the outcome. And it's recognising that. That's where it becomes meaningful, because now we have a wider dialogue.
How do you see gaming for good integrated, how is it leading into the industry as it evolves?
Gaming for good creates this separation between games and good. But if you think about the motivation for my team as an example, our desire is to bring our culture into the gaming platform. We want to see better representation, right? We think that that would inspire a generation of people.
And those games are primarily designed to be fun. They're commercial games. When people pick it up and we see the kind of emotional response that they have, that's what motivates and energises and inspires us because we bring happiness to people just by what we do. That is good - by design.
Some people would argue that it's easier with simulation games than other genres. What would you say to that?
Something that genuinely brings joy to people, something that connects people by default is good for society. Whether it's a football game, whether it's a shooter, whether it's a strategy game. The ultimate thing is by finding this audience, by finding my community, by finding my voice, by figuring out that I can do more, I can be better. Gaming has that power. So, for me, I think you can do good, you can do business and do good.
And I think that fundamentally this industry does both. The way that I think about it is: what we do is meaningful to society because it's directly connected to us as humans, which is our desire to play.
Watch or listen to the full conversation with Hugo Obe – ‘Building Games For A Continent’ - on the Good Game Club podcast here Good Game Club Podcast - YouTube.
