FIGN Launches to Empower Africa’s Women in Gaming
Nigeria’s Video Games Expo delivered something genuinely new: the official launch of the Female in Gaming Network (FIGN), the first pan-African community created primarily for women and girls in gaming. The all-female showcase on Day 3 wasn’t another expo session, but was a declaration that Africa’s gaming future must be inclusive.
Across the continent, gaming is growing rapidly, yet female representation remains thin, both in casual play and in professional ecosystems. It isn’t a question of interest or ability. It’s access. It’s visibility. It’s the simple fact that girls often grow up without spaces that say gaming is also “for them”. At the recent Esports World Cup, banners regularly showed four or five men beside a lone woman, if any female players appeared at all. These are the moments that sparked FIGN’s creation.
One of its co-founders explains it clearly: most girls don’t avoid gaming because they’re not interested, but because the continent doesn’t make it easy for them to find the industry. Even when she says she’s a gamer, people assume she only plays Mortal Kombat. Meanwhile, she plays FIFA, keeps multiple titles loaded on her PS5, and is a former Rivers State Scrabble champion. She doesn’t just play games, but she also builds them as a game developer. Her story mirrors thousands of others who simply never had the ecosystem to grow.
FIGN wants to change that narrative permanently. And they have moved quickly. Though barely a month old, the organisation is already present in seven countries: Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Cameroon, Uganda, and more on the way. With 15 co-founders who each run their own organisations and communities, FIGN operates with a non-hierarchical model where everyone is empowered. “Everyone is a boss,” she says, emphasising that the network is designed to let individuals lead, create, and build opportunities for themselves and others.
Their Day 3 launch at the Video Games Expo introduced this vision to the public. The room brought together women interested in everything from esports and storytelling to game design and development. The goal was simple: show that FIGN is here, it’s real, and it has come to stay.
But what made the launch even more interesting were the partnerships they’ve already secured. FIGN is working with Alliance Française, and next month, they will collaborate with the French Embassy. Banks and tech innovation hubs are also joining in. It goes far beyond playing games; this is about access, training, employment, digital creativity, and opportunity. If gaming is becoming one of the world’s most valuable creative industries, then African women deserve a seat at the table from day one.
The founders keep returning to the same question: why can’t both genders compete equally? Skill isn’t the issue. Talent isn’t the issue. The issue is the ecosystem, and FIGN was created to fix that. By building a safe, supportive, and ambitious community, they hope to remove the barriers that have held girls back for years.
What happened on Day 3 of the Expo was more than a launch. It marked the beginning of a shift. FIGN has stepped into a space that never truly existed at scale in Africa, and they are building it with speed, clarity, and purpose. As Africa steps into its global gaming era, FIGN is making sure women and girls are stepping in too.