70% of SA youth aspire
to gaming careers

South Africa’s gaming industry is emerging as a vital economic sector, with 70% of youth eager to pursue careers in gaming and esports, according to a new report released last month by HP and RGB Gaming.

The SA HP Gaming Report reveals that 80% of SA youth are unaware of relevant educational and training opportunities, despite the country being home to 26.5-million gamers. This gap threatens to hinder the sector’s potential to combat youth unemployment and drive digital innovation.

The gaming and esports industry in SA is predicted to generate R473-million in 2024 and surpass R500-million by 2029. Despite rapid growth, the report highlights a disconnect between youth interest and awareness of career pathways.

_{Key findings presented at the SA HP Gaming Report launch. Photo: JASON BANNIER.}

HP Gaming Garage

The HP Gaming Garage program, in collaboration with edX, is a free online resource designed to equip students with the skills and knowledge needed to pursue careers in gaming and technology industry. The program provides a variety of educational courses and professional certificates. Several language options are available, including Swahili, French, and English.

“What we’re really doing is providing education as a service,” said Mayank Dhingra, education business leader of HP, during a keynote at the launch of the report. “We’re making this accessible to everybody, removing the barriers of entries, and we’re making sure that it’s on a medium that students and learners enjoy and are already sticky on.”

The courses, designed by university professors, include:

• A Complete Guide to Game Design
• From Code to Creation: Mastering Game Programming
• The What and How of Esports Management! 
• HP AI Teacher Academy
• The Generative AI Mastery: Revolutionizing Game Development

An Esports Management and Game Development professional certificate program is also offered.

“Seven careers and 20 jobs – that’s the average of any student who’s studying today,” said Dhingra. “But if you’re in a gaming space, you might have a career for life. That’s how stable the gaming industry is going to be going forward.”

Dhingra said the reason they chose to go mainstream with this project is because they realised that gaming can open many career pathways.

“Gaming today is $230-billion industry ballpark, and by 2030, it’s going to go to be $700-billion. If you can design a game, you are at the upper end of design skills.”

He said that automobile manufacturers are looking for game designers, not just to design the exteriors of the cars, but also the interiors in terms of the infotainment system.

“As autonomous driving becomes omnipresent, the inside is going to become a gaming arcade. I think the most interesting example I saw was from US Army, which brought an app from a game designer.”

Yesh Surjoodeen, HP Southern and Central Africa MD, said: “There is strong interest among South African youth to turn their passion for gaming into careers. Through initiatives like HP Gaming Garage, we aim to provide accessible tools and education to bridge this gap and help them thrive in the digital economy.”

During a panel discussion, Naledi Matutoane, a Twitch streamer and gaming content creator, said: “I started streaming back during lockdown when there were very few South African streamers that I knew of, and that was why I started streaming: because I wanted to be another face, another familiar face, a South African face, and – more importantly for me – a black woman on Twitch.

“It’s been four years since then, and when I started, there were two women that I knew of that stream on Twitch – and now, I don’t have enough hands [to count them all.”

_{Panel discussion during the launch of the SA HP Gaming Report. Photo: JASON BANNIER.}

In 2021, HP established a physical Gaming Garage in Dubai in collaboration with AMD, located at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Surjoodeen told Gadget that HP is looking to bring a similar establishment to South Africa, but this is currently not on the immediate roadmap.

At the 2024 Really Awesome Gaming Expo (rAge), HP hosted a GameOn with HP Gaming Garage hackathon during which game developers were tasked to create an innovative game that reflected SA culture and heritage. Participating teams received guidance and resources from the HP Gaming Garage course to bring their ideas to life. The top teams received accolades for their innovative designs.

* To view the free online courses, visit the edX website here.

* Download the SA HP Gaming Report here.

* Jason Bannier is a data analyst at World Wide Worx and writer for Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Bluesky at @jas2bann.