Today, Microsoft, through its Africa Transformation Office (ATO), announced its planned Xbox Game Studios Game Camp Africa. This will be a two-day conference to recognise and celebrate all game creators across more than 50 diverse countries and regions, with the conference running from 15-16 July 2023, and open for applications.

According to Microsoft, Game Camp is an initiative that unifies various Xbox initiatives under one umbrella where talent is celebrated, and game developers are empowered to pursue their dreams.

While the camp, including presentations, panels and workshops, is available online for all registered campers, Game Camp will host four in-person locations for campers during the two days in Cairo, Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi. The Johannesburg event will be hosted at Microsoft’s offices in South Africa - 3012 William Nicol Drive, with the schedule up at the link.

These sites will offer viewing parties, on-site panel sessions and opportunities to meet with Microsoft and Xbox personnel. Furthermore, teams or individuals with games to pitch are encouraged to do so.

To participate, individuals must be of legal age, reside in any country on the African continent and be studying or working part or full-time in the field of software development, visual arts, 3D, music and audio, web design, narrative design or professional project management. See the complete list of participation requirements at Xbox.com

The two full days are themed “The Journey of a Game” and will offer multiple perspectives on the many times complex craft of game development. In addition, there will be significant online learning components to the camp, which will allow participants to engage with focused training modules on topics that align closely with their skills and interests, before and after the event.

Microsoft points towards a report commissioned by Newzoo which shows that the number of Sub-Saharan gamers has more than doubled in the last five years, with the region projected to be the fastest-growing globally for both mobile gamers and people who pay for games. The State of the African Games Industry 2022 finds that South Africa has the highest saturation of gamers, with 24m people playing within a population of 59m (40%). In Ghana, 27% of people play games, with 23% in Nigeria, 22% in Kenya and 13% in Ethiopia.