With all the doom and gloom surrounding Brexit and how it will impact our beloved iGaming industry, I wanted to shift the focus to a more inspiring subject for this week’s edition of Becky’s Affiliated.  My choice was Africa and why it’s the next new iGaming market, especially when it comes to mobile gaming, mobile payments and a real mobile multi-channel experience.

In addition to stacking up on vast industry knowledge over the past 25 years, Christina Thakor-Rankin, Principal Consultant at 1710 Gaming, attended Sports Betting East Africa in May and will act as the moderator for Sports Betting West Africa later this month.  With all this in mind and after reading her article on the African market in Infinity Magazine, I asked Thakor-Rankin to share her expertise on Africa with CalvinAyre.com as well.

I was impressed with Thakor-Rankin’s attitude towards visiting a part of the world that many people are afraid to visit.  When asked if she felt safe traveling to Sports Betting East Africa her response was yes and she added, “if you want to find out what an emerging market is really like, asking me or anyone else will give you some of the answers, but it will always be a poor substitute compared to getting out there and seeing and experiencing it for yourself”.

While she was at the conference, Thakor-Rankin saw and met with attendees and exhibitors from Africa, Asia, UK, Europe and Latin America. She said the similarities between Latin America and Africa are many and it is no surprise that those who are interested in places like Columbia, Argentina and Brazil are also interested in Africa.  Hopefully our interview below will help explain why.