For the last few years, there was one market almost everyone in iGaming wanted to talk about:

Brazil.

Operators wanted to enter it.
Suppliers wanted Brazilian clients.
Affiliates wanted Brazilian traffic.
Everyone wanted a Brazil strategy.

And it made sense.

A huge population. A strong sports culture. Rapid digitalisation. An already significant betting audience. And, most importantly, regulation turning existing demand into a formal market.

Now I increasingly hear another geography entering exactly the same conversations:

Africa.

So the obvious question is:

Is Africa becoming the next Brazil of iGaming?

Looking at the latest data, my answer would be:

Yes — and no.

The growth opportunity is very real.

But approaching Africa as “the next Brazil” may actually be one of the biggest mistakes operators and suppliers can make.

Because Brazil was one emerging market.

Africa is an emerging-market portfolio.

And that distinction changes almost everything.

First, why was Brazil such a big deal?

 Brazil didn’t suddenly discover betting when regulation arrived.

The demand already existed.

What changed was the infrastructure around it.

From 1 January 2025, Brazil’s new federal regulatory framework for fixed-odds betting came fully into effect.

And the numbers that followed were significant.

In the first six months alone:

• 17.7 million Brazilians used authorised betting platforms;
• regulated operators generated R$17.4 billion in GGR;
• 78 companies were authorised and monitored.

Brazil Ministry of Finance / first-half market data

By the end of 2025, the Ministry of Finance reported:

25.2 million Brazilian bettors.

There were 79 authorised companies operating 183 brands.

Brazil Ministry of Finance — 2025 Management Report

And the market continues to evolve. The Ministry maintains an updated public register of companies authorised to operate under the federal framework.

Brazil Ministry of Finance — Authorised Operators

Brazil therefore followed a pattern we have seen before in emerging iGaming markets:

Existing demand → regulation → licensing → operator entry → intense acquisition → competition for retention and profitability.

That last step matters.

Because once dozens of operators are competing for essentially the same players, simply acquiring another account stops being enough.

The question becomes:

Can you understand that player better than your competitors do?

Keep that thought.

Because Africa may be heading toward a similar question — but on a much more complicated scale.

Africa is no longer a future opportunity

One thing became very clear to me looking through the newest numbers:

We should probably stop describing Africa as a market that will eventually become significant.

It already is.

Gaming Compliance International’s July 2026 Africa report estimates total African online gambling GGR at:

$23 billion in 2025.

That was up from approximately $20 billion in 2024.

Gaming Compliance International — Africa Online Gaming Report 2024–2025

But the most interesting number isn’t $23 billion.

It’s this:

77%.

Only $5.2 billion — 23% — of African online gambling GGR was generated within the regulated sector.

Approximately $17.8 billion, or 77%, remained unregulated.

Gaming Compliance International — Full Africa Report

That tells us something important.

The demand has moved faster than regulation.

And that is one of the first similarities with the earlier development of Latin American markets.

Players don’t necessarily wait for regulators to create a perfectly structured industry before they start playing.

Consumer behaviour often comes first.

Regulation follows.

Capital follows regulation.

Competition follows capital.

The similarities with Brazil are difficult to ignore

There are several reasons why people are beginning to look at Africa the way they previously looked at Brazil.

1. A huge digital consumer base

 Africa has a population scale that very few emerging opportunities can match.

But population alone means very little for iGaming.

The more interesting question is whether consumers have the digital infrastructure and behaviour necessary to participate.

And increasingly, they do.

GeoPoll’s Betting in Africa 2026 research surveyed 2,866 respondents across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

Across those six markets:

95% of bettors place bets on mobile devices.

Not 60%.

Not 70%.

95%.

GeoPoll — Betting in Africa 2026

At this point, describing these markets as mobile-first almost understates what is happening.

For betting, they are approaching mobile-only behaviour.

And that has enormous implications.

Load speed matters.

Data consumption matters.

UX matters.

Payment friction matters.

The number of steps between intention and bet matters.

The operator isn’t simply competing on odds or bonuses.

It is competing on friction.

2. Payments may be Africa’s Pix moment

One reason Brazil scaled so effectively as a digital market was the payment infrastructure around it.

Pix dramatically changed how Brazilian consumers move money digitally.

Africa has a different infrastructure, but potentially an equally important one:

mobile money.

According to the GSMA State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2025, Sub-Saharan Africa had:

1.1 billion registered mobile-money accounts in 2024.

That represented 19% year-on-year growth.

The region accounted for more than half of global mobile-money value.

GSMA — State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2025

The GSMA’s Mobile Economy Africa report also puts mobile-money transaction value in Sub-Saharan Africa at approximately $1.1 trillion in 2024.

GSMA — The Mobile Economy Africa

This is important far beyond payments.

iGaming grows faster when three things become easy:

access, identity and transactions.

Smartphones solved much of the access problem.

Mobile-money ecosystems dramatically reduce transaction friction.

Regulation is increasingly addressing the third part of the equation.

The infrastructure for high-frequency digital consumer behaviour is already there.

3. Sport creates a natural acquisition layer

Brazil has football.

Africa very definitely has football too.

GeoPoll’s 2026 research found:

67% of bettors across the six surveyed markets primarily bet on football.

And betting isn’t particularly occasional.

55% bet at least weekly.

28% bet once a day or more.

GeoPoll — Betting in Africa 2026

Another GeoPoll study conducted in 2026 across Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique and South Africa found football followership between 91% and 96% across the surveyed markets.

Betting participation among football audiences was also substantial, ranging from 49% in Ghana to 77% in Kenya.

GeoPoll — Africa Football Survey 2026

So again, the similarity with Brazil is obvious.

You have a highly engaged sports audience.

Mobile distribution.

Digital payments.

Existing gambling behaviour.

And regulators increasingly interested in formalising and taxing that activity.

It sounds like a familiar emerging-market formula.

But this is where the comparison starts to break.

There is no such thing as an “Africa strategy”

This is probably the most important point.

We regularly hear companies say:

“Africa is one of our target markets.”

But Africa isn’t a market.

It’s 54 countries.

Different regulations.

Different languages.

Different payment systems.

Different economies.

Different levels of disposable income.

Different gaming preferences.

Different acquisition channels.

And completely different relationships between regulated and unregulated gambling.

Even the six countries in GeoPoll’s research behave surprisingly differently.

Across all six, football dominates.

Except South Africa.

There, casino games were the most-played product among surveyed bettors at 36%, versus only 29% for football.

Then there is Kenya.

Aviator and other crash-style games represented 24% of respondents’ primary betting activity — approximately twice the level seen in the next closest market.

And then Uganda stands out for spending behaviour.

Across the six markets, 58% of bettors spend less than $10 per month.

But Uganda has a noticeably larger higher-value segment: 17% reported spending at least $50 per month.

GeoPoll — Betting in Africa 2026

Same continent.

Completely different player.

And that is exactly why I think the phrase “Africa strategy” can become dangerous.

Brazil offered scale through relative uniformity

Brazil is obviously not a homogeneous market either.

No market is.

But commercially, operators entering Brazil had several major advantages.

One dominant language.

One federal regulatory framework for the newly regulated betting market.

One enormous national consumer market.

A powerful football ecosystem.

A highly scalable payment method in Pix.

A relatively connected media environment.

That creates the possibility of achieving scale with a relatively consistent operating model.

Africa offers something different.

Scale through diversity.

And diversity is simultaneously its biggest opportunity and its biggest operational challenge.

The product that works in Kenya may not be the product that works in South Africa.

The payment experience that works in Ghana may not be right for another market.

The acquisition message that converts a football bettor may completely miss a casino-first player.

Even player value looks different.

Which means simply translating your website and changing the currency isn’t localisation.

And launching the same welcome bonus across ten countries isn’t an African strategy.

This is where the Brazil comparison becomes really interesting

Brazil created a huge race for acquisition.

When a newly regulated market attracts dozens of operators and hundreds of brands, everyone initially wants essentially the same thing:

players.

Acquire quickly.

Build market share.

Establish the brand.

But eventually acquisition becomes more expensive.

Competition increases.

Margins come under pressure.

And the conversation changes.

From:

How many players can we acquire?

to:

How much value can we create from the players we already have?

Africa may compress this journey.

Because the market starts with fragmentation already built in.

An operator cannot assume that two players from different African markets behave similarly simply because they are both “African players.”

In fact, even two players from the same market may require completely different journeys.

And this is where I think the next competitive advantage becomes much more interesting.

The next emerging-market battle may be about intelligence, not acquisition

For years, iGaming growth was heavily acquisition-driven.

More traffic.

More affiliates.

More bonuses.

More registrations.

More first-time deposits.

And acquisition will obviously remain important.

But emerging markets eventually mature.

CAC increases.

Regulation becomes tighter.

Bonus strategies become easier to replicate.

Products become increasingly similar.

And AI makes copying features faster than ever.

What becomes harder to replicate is:

understanding.

Understanding which player has genuine long-term value.

Understanding what motivates them.

Understanding which product they actually prefer.

Understanding when to communicate.

Understanding when not to communicate.

Understanding what they are likely to do next.

And doing it early enough for that insight to matter.

That’s why I believe segmentation and personalisation become particularly important in markets like these.

Not because AI is fashionable.

But because diversity makes generic customer journeys increasingly inefficient.

If South African, Kenyan and Ugandan betting behaviour already looks materially different at market level, imagine the variation when we move down to individual player behaviour.

Country-level localisation is only the first layer.

The next layer is the individual.

Africa may reward a different kind of operator

The companies that won the first stage of emerging-market expansion were often the ones able to move fastest.

Get the licence.

Launch the product.

Buy traffic.

Build distribution.

That still matters.

But I suspect the next stage will reward companies that can combine speed with something harder:

local intelligence.

Not:

“What works in Africa?”

But:

“What works for this market?”

And eventually:

“What works for this player?”

That requires better data.

Better segmentation.

Better local understanding.

Better payment experiences.

Better product decisions.

And increasingly, better personalisation.

So, is Africa the next Brazil?

In terms of opportunity?

Possibly bigger.

In terms of the underlying pattern?

There are clear similarities.

Large existing demand.

Strong sports culture.

Rapid digitalisation.

Payment infrastructure.

Regulation catching up with consumer behaviour.

International operator interest.

But strategically?

No.

And I think treating it that way would miss the most interesting thing about the opportunity.

Brazil rewarded companies that understood how to achieve scale in one enormous emerging market.

Africa may reward companies that learn how to achieve scale without losing local relevance.

That’s a much harder problem.

But also a much more interesting one.

For years, everyone wanted a Brazil strategy.

Now everyone seems to want an Africa strategy.

Maybe the companies that win won’t have one.

They’ll have a South Africa strategy.

A Kenya strategy.

A Nigeria strategy.

A Ghana strategy.

And underneath all of them, the ability to understand every player as something more specific than a market segment.

Because perhaps the next emerging-market battle isn’t simply:

Who can acquire the most players?

It’s:

Who can understand radically different players fastest?

Brazil rewarded scale.

Africa may reward intelligence.