GameUp Africa Podcast

In this episode, we sit down with Joanna Oluoch, Game Developer and Founder of Sike Studio whose journey into games began in an unexpected place: Mechatronics Engineering! After teaching herself programming and balancing a semiconductor engineering internship with a game development bootcamp, Joanna made the leap into the games industry and has since become the Creative Director behind ARGO, an au...

What happens when generations grow up playing games where nobody looks like them, sounds like them, or shares their experiences? On this episode, we sit down with Jennifer Lufau, Cofounder of Narratify and Afrogameuses, a leading voice on representation and inclusion in gaming. We unpack misogynoir in gaming spaces, authentic African representation, performative diversity, online harassment, and t...

In this episode, we sit down with Dean Gichukie, a 3x founder, operator, and builder who scaled fintech ventures to $15M+ in transaction value and 40 million data profiles… then made an unexpected pivot into game development to build Hiru. Why walk away from scale to start again? Dean unpacks the leap and what it really takes to build at scale in Africa. We talk about culture illustration in games...

This episode features Sithe Ncube, Producer at Nyamakop We talk about getting into the industry, building talent, breaking barriers, and what it really takes to build sustainable games beyond passion projects From co-founding Ubongo Game Lab, to creating Games Plus Girls, to documenting African women in games (yes, 1,000 of them), to producing Relooted at Nyamakop, she’s not new to this. The conve...