A 'Lonely' Inventor Creates a Computer Game in Africa

NAIROBI, Kenya — Like plenty of enterprising, tech-savvy young people, Wesley Kirinya decided a few years ago to create his own computer game.

The problem for Kirinya is that he lives in Kenya, where most people have far more on their minds, like getting electricity or a job or their next meal.

Computer game inventor seems a quixotic career choice on a continent so beset by poverty. Yet Kirinya, 23, is among a small group of young Africans who are doing just that.

Though the market for their products is tiny and they have no major backers, they are evidence of a slow but inevitable seep: the culture of computer software design is finding its way to Africa.

"In the gaming community, I'm more or less it," said Kirinya, whose game "The Adventures of Nyangi," was completed this year. "It's a lonely feeling."

Statistics suggest that there are only about 1.2 million computers in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with 650 million people. That is a penetration rate of about two-tenths of 1 percent. In the United States, there are at least 200 million computers for the population of roughly 300 million.

But that hasn't stopped the spread of the technology sector in Africa. South Africa has a small but busy bevy of software developers. In Kenya and in Ghana, computer whizzes like Kirinya hope to make their mark.

It is a rise of inventiveness that some economists say offers hope for the long-term economic future of the region.

"For him to just come up with a computer game is well ahead of his time because people will say, 'Kenyans, computer games? No, we don't make computer games,'" said Kenyan economist James Shikwati. "He has shown that computer games are not a preserve of the Western world."

The designers are part of a young breed of entrepreneurs seeking to break the perception of Africa as a place in need of aid handouts from the developed world. Give us tax breaks, a good business environment and a robust technology infrastructure, they say, and we'll create the businesses that could drive an economic boom.

"The only problem will be to get gamers to patronize African games after so many decades of playing foreign ones," said Francis Dittoh, a young game designer in Ghana. "With the older generation, most of them feel games are a waste of time and as such anyone going into a field like that is a loser."

Kirinya is relatively affluent by Kenyan standards and spent $5,000 of the money he made in previous jobs to create "The Adventures of Nyangi."

But he faced some daunting obstacles. He cannot afford Internet service at home; phone service here is spotty and expensive. To get some of the programming textbooks he needed, he gave some cash to a friend traveling to the United States. The friend gave the money to his sister, who studies at the University of Georgia. She bought the books on Amazon.com and had them shipped by sea to cut costs. Kirinya got them six months later.

Kirinya understands the irony. His one-man company is called Gwimgrafx Studios. "Gwim" stands for "God Works In Me." It took him about two years to finish the project.

In his game, a black woman named Nyangi (who, as Kirinya admits, bears a very close resemblance to Lara Croft of the "Tomb Raider" series) must avoid AK-47 wielding tribesmen as she searches for 10 hidden artifacts.

By Western computer game standards, Kirinya's effort is awkward and slow; there is no music, no storyline and no character development.

But the game is unique because Kirinya created the engine that powers the software's code, rather than downloading one of the many serviceable engines available on the Internet. The only element that he farmed out was some of the graphic design to a Czech programmer for $600.

While the game has little commercial future, analysts say it reveals the genre Africans could develop if given the opportunity. Game designers like Kirinya have a whole continent of cultures and plots to mine for original story material.

"You have this history here, you have this culture here, you have this different outlook on life that's all over Africa, and that's your unique comp advantage," said Erik Hersman, an Orlando, Fla.-based blogger who writes about technology in Africa.

"Nyangi" is available online for $9.95, and is on sale at just one Nairobi store.

George Oyare, the music and games buyer at that store, NuMetro, said Kirinya's game has sold 10 copies at about $8 each.

Those sales may seem small, but the popularity of computer games and Playstation 2 reflect a growing interest in games in Kenya, Oyare said.

"When I was a kid, what we did over the holidays was to go out, get paper bags, create a ball and play," Oyare said. "Nowadays, it's video games."

Nick Wadhams is a Nairobi-based freelance journalist on assignment for Cox Newspapers.