PlayStation maker Sony invests in African gaming startup Carry1st

Sony is making a bold bet on Africa’s video game industry. 

The Japanese consumer electronics and gaming giant has invested an undisclosed sum into Carry1st, a video game studio based in Cape Town, South Africa, via its Sony Innovation Fund venture arm, Carry1st told CNBC exclusively. 

The deal is a strategic investment that will see the two companies partner on a range of commercial opportunities. For now, the two companies are in the “exploratory stages” of that partnership.

Cordel Robbin-Coker, CEO and co-founder of Carry1st, said talks with the Sony Innovation Fund began about eight to nine months ago, and that his pitch to the PlayStation console maker was that Africa is the next big market to find growth in video games. 

“As large companies like Sony that have really strong footholds in tier-one and tier-two markets start thinking about where the next billion customers and gamers are going to come from, our pitch is that Africa is a prime market for that,” Robbin-Coker told CNBC in an interview. 

“We believe very firmly that there is an incredibly underrated console opportunity in Africa,” Robbin-Coker said, citing countries like Nigeria, Morocco and Algeria as places where console adoption is rising a lot. 

Sony is coming into an emerging gaming market with blistering growth potential. Sub-Saharan Africa’s gaming industry is expected to generate over $1 billion for the first time in 2024, according to research from Carry1st and venture capital firm Konvoy. 

Many gamers in Africa are buying consoles on “gray” markets — in other words, from vendors who’ve imported consoles from overseas to resell them locally, Robbin-Coker added. 

One aspect of Carry1st’s partnership with Sony was about helping the games and entertainment giant expand PlayStation’s footprint in Africa. 

Sony forecast it would sell a record 25 million…