As Nigeria continues to hold its crown of unofficial tech capital of Africa, it seems the tech reach could be much further as big hubs like Silicon Valley in the US are starting to fall apart, making way for a successor which could very much be in Africa. This doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges yet to be overcome however, as with the added attention of the rapid growth that is being seen and the speed at which the market is moving, one of the big challenges particularly in regulation will need to be addressed quickly.
The one most often cited as a challenge is largely within online gaming as it continues to grow and grip the majority young audience in the country – as a growing number of online gaming particularly within the gambling sector become available, less experienced or newer players may be taken advantage of by sites that are set up in order to take advantage of these players and as such regulation will need to be put in place to protect and guide players to more legitimate services.
Similarly, the rest of the world is seeing a marked increase in problem players too, some countries such as the UK have deemed online gaming a pandemic against younger audiences and have made efforts to restrict participation options through initiatives such as Gamstop which essentially blacklist players. Despite this, operators have found ways to deliver their service despite these changes as many registers in other countries providing a list of sites here at casinos not on Gamstop that are available even if you are self-included.
In order to avoid many of the same issues, efforts need to be made to ensure the regulation is in place before the problem grows too large, but there is a silver lining for the region here. Without existing infrastructure, it’s easy to adjust and change new rulings to support whichever direction is desired as nothing needs to be updated, changed, or overhauled. Similarly, by looking at other countries and discovering where they succeeded and where they may have failed, it provides a bit of a road map into the best direction to head to find the most success but to also avoid the many pitfalls along the way.
Many of these points operate in much the same way outside of the gaming and gambling industries too – the internet can be daunting to newer users when they are flooded with results, particularly when it is a newer or less familiar experience and being able to guide these people to where they want to go in the safest way possible will ensure misuse is brought down to a minimum, as Nigeria sits on the cusp of its own technological revolution of sorts, now is the time to look to the future and where technology as usage is moving to in order to best prepare for not only the present challenges that are to be overcome, but also to foresee the possibility of future challenges and how to best tackle those too.