African Web3 game publisher raises $27M

Carry1st , an African gaming studio that specializes in mobile games, raised $27 million in its latest funding round. The company plans to use the newly raised funds to further develop its content creation and publishing business. Bitkraft Ventures led the funding round for the gaming studio. Other major investors in the fund raise include a16z, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital, and TTV Capital. Carry1st previously raised $20 million last year from Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and a16z. At the time, the company wanted to use the capital to increase its production capabilities and add more content to its portfolio. Carry1st was also actively exploring "play to earn" games and the integration of NFTs into the gaming experience. Apart from its gaming initiatives, some of the new funding will go toward developing the company’s monetisation-as-a-service platform, called Pay1st. Carry1st also provides mobile game management and monetization services to other game publishers. Last year, the firm partnered with Riot Games, the publisher behind popular games like League of Legends, to manage its local payments. Africa is emerging as one of the fastest adopters of Web3 technology in the world. According to a report published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), crypto transactions from the region touched $20 billion per month back in 2021. One of the reasons for the popularity of alternative assets in many regions of Africa is that the mainstream fiat assets there are notoriously unstable. Plus, the youth in this area have shown enormous interest in this emerging industry. That’s the reason why many industry insiders feel that Africa is ripe for Web3 adoption.