Technology companies are eyeing the mobile smartphone space in Africa to cash in on the 300 million Africans using mobile gadgets to play video games.
The smartphone and tablet games combined are expected to bring in 42 per cent of the gaming market's global revenues, according to a Statista 2017 report.
According to Phil Spencer, executive vice president of gaming at Microsoft, the company is collecting views from Kenyans and Africans to understand the needs that video gaming can meet.
“I have been engaging with student software developers from universities in Nairobi. I am still listening to people’s views to understand the kind of solutions to offer,” said Spencer, during the launch of the Africa Development Centre by Microsoft, the seventh largest of their development centres globally.
He said the centre will provide opportunities for gaming experts to come up with original content that can be consumed using mobile gadgets. The centre is looking to tap into African engineering talent that will develop innovative solutions that span the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge
It will also be a centre of collaboration for solutions that are relevant to the African space, including Fintech, agriculture technology and offgrid energy.
The tech company, now actively seeking engineering talent in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and mixed reality, has plans to employ 100 engineers by the end of year. The number will increase to 500 in the two centres, Nairobi and Lagos, by 2023.
The centre is presenting a first opportunity for Kenya’s youth who are interested in software application development, data science and mixed reality, to enable them build careers using a cloud curriculum which will be tested in local universities.
