Play-to-earn (P2E) gaming adoption in Nigeria could hit 33% this year, according to Finder’s NFT Gaming Adoption Report. Finder polled 43,312 people across 26 countries to reveal that 16% of Nigerian internet users have played to earn.
Meanwhile, an additional 17% plan to try one this year, meaning adoption could soon reach 33%. Play-to-earn gaming adoption is highest in India (34%) and lowest in Sweden (4%), Finder stated.
Nigeria currently ranks 9th globally for P2E adoption but Finder’s cryptocurrency editor, Keegan Francis, said forecast adoption will move it up to 5th. “Nigeria is set to experience the biggest jump in P2E NFT gaming adoption of any country included in the study, followed by Peru (16%) and The Philippines (14%),” Francis stated.
Globally adoption is set to increase from just 14% to 24%. While men are more likely to have played-to-earn, similar numbers of men and women are looking to get involved over the next 12 months. India has the most gamers (34%), followed by Hong Kong (29%), The United Arab Emirates (27%) and the Philippines (25%).
Francis said that gamers who can’t afford the entry cost to play might want to consider joining a guild: “Guilds allow players, known as scholars, to play a game like Axie Infinity for free by lending you the required NFTs and you are then usually entitled to a share of the earnings while the remainder goes to the guild.”
P2E and mobile gaming in Africa
In April, Opis Group expanded its on-fungible token (NFT) play-to-earn (P2E) game, OpiPets to Africa in order to enable its users to earn both passive and active income from the OpiPets game [and the cloud application] without connecting any wallet to their accounts from the start.
In a 2021 study commissioned by games analytics company Newzoo and Carry 1st—a South African gaming platform—the number of gamers has risen to 186 million people from 77 million in 2015 in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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South Africa leads the continent with 24 million gamers, accounting for 40 per cent of its population, followed by Ghana with 27 per cent in second place, and Nigeria with 23 per cent in third place. Kenya and Ethiopia are the continent's fourth and fifth largest gaming markets, with 22 per cent and 13 per cent of their populations participating in gaming, respectively.
When Metaverse Magna, MVM—Africa’s first and largest crypto gaming DAO— unveiled its scholarship programme, the CEO, Yele Bademosi said that “Play-to-Earn has the potential to drive mass adoption of crypto in Africa, approximately 40% of 1.2 billion Africans are below the poverty line so the opportunity to help 250 million gamers on the continent earns up to $1,000 a month is a worthy mission in our quest to drive economic transformation on the continent.”
