African developers move into the mobile market, create culturally relevant games

With the continent's number of mobile broadband subscribers sitting around 700 million and internet users at 44 million, game developers in Africa are looking to move into the mobile games market, reports CNN.

Maliyo gaming firm, one of the newest African companies, aims to create Facebook and mobile games that are culturally relevant to the African Market. Founder Hugo Obi took inspiration from social games company Zynga in creating his company.

"Nigeria is the largest country in the continent," Obi said. "It has the fastest growing internet users, fastest growing mobile users and the shared nature of the Nigerian people is how they love to consume.

"They are very keen on new trends and new content," he added. "So there is an immense opportunity and you can already see that with loads of other young tech start ups."

The growing industry is also creating jobs. An estimated 70 percent of young Africans have no job, and a growing number are taking advantage of the growing digital industry and creating their own companies.

"When I started the company three years ago there was a global market for this, but there wasn't an African market," added Anne Shongwe, founder of educational game developer Afroes. "The skill set was here, but companies didn't believe it was worth investing. For us we are prioritizing content for Africa."