EiG 2017: John Kamara, director, Global Gaming Africa

Global Gaming Africa director John Kamara has described the untapped potential across Africa as sports betting continues to kick the door open for marketing other types of gaming across the continent.

“It’s allowed people to become more trusting of gaming companies and allowed people to want to be entertained more by gaming, so it’s given the opportunity to up-sell people,” he said.

Speaking at Clarion Gaming’s EiG Expo in Berlin earlier this month, Kamara said igaming was increasing gaining the same interest as telecom and mobile technologies have in recent years.

“The mobile phone has allowed us to bridge a gap and allowed us to move from no technology to technology in record time. For Africa the mobile phone is the most important tool that we have as a continent”.

While rural areas of Africa are still not well served for data, Kamara said USSD (unstructured supplementary service data), where a hastag and code can enable users to receive information through the telephone network, was helping to increase access.

“You don’t have to have a smart phone, if you have an old Nokia 3210, you can still buy the same product using USSD, because you can still connect the payment solutions to it”, he said.

Kamara went onto explain that, as in Europe, the regulatory climate across the continent was different in each country, and flagged the nations that are making the greatest headway in the market to date.