Nigerian game developers: who is building games in Nigeria

Nigeria’s films and music travel the world. Its games industry is younger and much smaller, but it is real, and it is growing. BusinessDay, citing PwC’s Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook, put Nigeria’s gaming market at about $176 million in revenue in 2024, with the fastest projected growth of Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. Most of that money is spent on mobile games.

This is a guide to the people trying to change that: the studios that have shipped games from Nigeria, what they made, and what they are up against.

The studios

Maliyo Games

Probably the best-known Nigerian studio. Maliyo, based in Lagos, was co-founded by Hugo Obi and Oluseye Soyode-Johnson, and in its early days it made free browser and mobile games with Nigerian settings: Okada Ride, about a Lagos motorbike taxi, and Mosquito Smasher, a tapping game made to raise awareness of malaria. In a 2012 interview Obi called casual browser and mobile games “an untapped niche” in Africa.

Since then Maliyo has made Whot King, a digital version of Nigeria’s favourite card game, and its biggest title, Disney Iwájú: Rising Chef, a mobile game tied to the Disney+ series Iwájú, which is set in a futuristic Lagos. Maliyo made it with Disney Games and Kugali, and it came out on Android and iOS on 28 February 2024. BusinessDay describes Maliyo as the first African developer to partner with Disney Games on the Iwájú title.

ChopUp

A Lagos studio co-founded by Zubair Abubakar and Bayo Puddicombe. Its best-known game is Danfo, a racer built around Lagos’s commuter buses, and it has also made Jagun: Clash of Kingdoms, on African warrior themes. ChopUp has also run a made-in-Africa gaming app that distributes locally themed and casual games, not all of them Nigerian.

Gamsole

Founded by Abiola Olaniran, who has been recognised by Forbes and Microsoft for his work in mobile games. Gamsole’s titles include Gidi Run, an endless runner through the streets of Lagos, and Candy Puzzle: Match 3, a casual puzzle game that has reached players on app stores around the world. From early on, Gamsole aimed its games at players outside Nigeria as well as at home.

Kucheza Gaming

Kucheza published The Wild Kingdoms in 2022, an adventure built on Yoruba mythology that picked up a large number of downloads in Brazil, and Oga Train Station, an idle tycoon game built on the Naija hustle.

Kuluya

Part of the first wave. Kuluya was founded in 2010, made games around African myths and stories, and was one of the studios IT News Africa named among the continent’s most important developers in 2013. More than 60% of its downloads came from outside Nigeria. It had closed by 2017, but it showed early that African stories could sell abroad.

The independents

Not every Nigerian game comes from a studio. Tade Ajiboye, a Lagos-based independent developer, spent about two years building Go North, a cosy maze-adventure, on his own, and released it on Xbox. Before that he made a mobile game called Water Bubble and did freelance game and VR work.

A lot of Nigerian projects start the same way: at game jams, in university tech hubs and in developer collectives, often as small downloadable games or demos.

What Nigerian developers are up against

• Getting onto the platforms. Ajiboye told OkayAfrica in 2026 that, as a Nigerian, he could not open developer accounts on Steam, PlayStation or Nintendo Switch. That shuts Nigerian independents out of three of the biggest stores in gaming unless they find a publisher or a partner abroad.
• Getting paid. Early on, very few players would spend money inside a game. A 2014 Al Jazeera America report, cited on Wikipedia, said only 15% of ChopUp’s customers were willing to pay.
• Getting noticed. A Nigerian game launches into a Google Play Store full of games from North America, Europe and Asia with far bigger marketing budgets.

What is helping

• A huge audience. Nigeria had about 107 million internet users at the start of 2025, according to DataReportal, and about three in four web visits in Nigeria come from a phone.
• Government attention. BusinessDay reports that the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture and the Creative Economy has included video gaming in its growth strategy.
• Growth forecasts. The same report says the Nigerian video game market is expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2028, more than $1 billion of it mobile, with esports at about $20 million.
• Stories nobody else has. The okada, the danfo, Whot, Yoruba myth, Lagos street life. Nigerian studios keep finding that local stories are what make their games stand out abroad.

Where AJ Cities fits

AJ Cities is a phone-first game set in Lagos, in a fictional estate on the edge of Ajegunle. It runs in the browser, so there is no store to get past and nothing to install, which is one answer to some of the problems above. It is also built to start on older phone browsers, back to Chrome 87 on Android and Safari on iOS 15, because not every phone is new. It has a single-player story about AJ, a man deported from London, and a live estate where adults meet other players. If you are already a fan, the fan hub gathers the stories, characters and places in one spot.

To play the games named here, see our list of Nigerian video games, and for studios from across the continent, our guide to African video games.

Who are the biggest game developers in Nigeria?

The best known include Maliyo Games (Whot King, Disney Iwájú: Rising Chef), ChopUp (Danfo), Gamsole (Gidi Run) and Kucheza Gaming (The Wild Kingdoms).

Who founded Maliyo Games?

Maliyo Games was co-founded by Hugo Obi and Oluseye Soyode-Johnson. It is based in Lagos.

How big is the Nigerian games industry?

BusinessDay, citing PwC, put the Nigerian gaming market at about $176 million in revenue in 2024, mostly mobile.

Can Nigerian developers publish on Steam or PlayStation?

Not easily. The Lagos developer Tade Ajiboye told OkayAfrica in 2026 that he could not open developer accounts on Steam, PlayStation or Nintendo Switch as a Nigerian. His game Go North is on Xbox.