French Ambassador to Nigeria visits Lagos-based Games Studio
Strengthening diplomatic ties between France and Nigeria, French Ambassador to the country, H.E. Emmanuelle Blatmann, made an official visit to the Maliyo Games studio last week.
The meeting was broadcast virtually to the Maliyo Games community, working across Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya and Bangladesh. Part of Her Excellency’s mandate includes building relationships with Nigerian businesses of note and the wider economic community of the country.
Opening proceedings, Maliyo Games CEO, Hugo Obi, noted that the studio’s growing pan-African footprint was a boon from the Covid-19 pandemic, which led the Nigerian games developer to think creatively about sourcing top talent from across the continent.
“We discovered that the best talent in African gaming is not concentrated in a singular location. This is why we developed our remote game developer training programme, known as GameUp Africa in partnership with Google. Our team is located across various African countries and we work cohesively and remotely.”
During her visit, the Ambassador elaborated on various avenues of growth and cooperation between the technology industry in the European Union (EU) and Maliyo Games through industrial partnerships with major French companies especially in the games industry.
Discussion also led to the suggestion of sending a Nigerian delegation, from Maliyo Games, to industry gatherings such as Paris Games Week to help bolster talent development and establish new networks for the African games studio. Additionally, Maliyo Games’ investment needs were discussed and a number of pipeline options were put forward by Her Excellency and her team for the game developer’s leadership to consider.
At the close of her visit, the Maliyo Games team introduced the French Ambassador to their latest title, a digital-take on the classic card game, Whot King. Her Excellency commented on her insights after brief game-play:
“I’m very impressed with the work that Hugo and the Maliyo team are doing. To see such technical creativity is refreshing. I’ve never played the Whot card game before, it feels like a fun game. I love the design of the game. It was very enjoyable to play and I even won some matches!”
ABOUT WHOT KING
Whot King is a casual card matching game that is available for players on Android & iOS. The game has over 100,000 installs on the app store with an average rating of 4.4.
Watch game trailer on YouTube.
Download Now on Android & iOS.
ABOUT MALIYO GAMES
Maliyo Games is a Lagos-based game development studio that creates African-inspired games for mobile users with over 40 games in its portfolio. Maliyo infuses the continent’s lively culture and context in each of its titles with a goal to embed Africa’s vibrant culture into mobile games through storylines, character development, immersive environments, captivating sounds and strong visuals.
Learn more at www.maliyo.com
ABOUT THE GAME UP AFRICA BOOTCAMP
GameUp Africa, developed by Maliyo Games in partnership with Google, supports young African game developers and creators from three countries: Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Derived from their in-house training programme and intended for entry-level candidates, the Game-Up runs over five months with three unique components: Learning, Mentoring and the Game Project. The overall outcome of the programme is to create a robust talent pipeline for Africa’s pioneering game development industry, spearheaded by Maliyo Games’ vision to become the largest gaming company on the continent.
