How African Player Expectations Shape iGaming Experiences – A Podcast with Wilfrid Olemba
Africa’s iGaming market cannot be understood through a single player profile, and neither can the products built for it. Speaking to iGaming AFRIKA’s Victoria Abiodun, Wilfrid Olemba, Affiliate Manager at WinWin Bet shared the starting point is not what operators assume African players want, but what players actually do, expect and experience when they use a platform.
His career has placed him close to those interactions from the beginning. Olemba entered the industry in 2022 through customer support, where speaking directly with players gave him an early view of their behaviour and frustrations. He later moved into VIP management in 2023 and 2024, where he saw the importance players placed on bonuses and odds, alongside the complaints that came with the experience. In 2024, he moved into affiliate management, bringing those earlier experiences into a role focused on attracting customers and understanding what makes them choose one platform over another.
“I started in 2022 as a customer support representative for another brand, where I started to understand player behavior. Since they were talking directly to me, I was able to see what they really wanted to see on the platform. In 2023 and 2024, I was working as a VIP Manager for VIP clients, where I was giving bonuses. I also realised that they cared a lot about bonuses and odds. I started working as an Affiliate Manager in 2024 as well, and that has been a real game changer. From my previous experiences, I knew what players wanted, and I learned how to bring more clients to different platforms. So, that is my whole experience, and I now know pretty much everything in the iGaming industry,” Wilfrid said.
That experience now feeds into the way he approaches product at WinWin Bet. He shared that the team looks at how players use the platform, including the features they return to and those they barely touch. The information gathered from that behaviour can then influence what is prioritised, improved or removed, with the aim of keeping the experience relevant rather than filling the product with features simply because they are available.
“Understanding players’ behaviors and expectancy is different from just building a general product for the same and just a general audience,” he said. “At WinWin, we try to adapt our products to each user. We see how, in general, they move on the platform, what they do, what they like, and what they do not like, including which features they completely ignore. We adapt based on these numbers so that the experience becomes easier for users.“
The data, however, does not always capture everything a player experiences. Wilfrid pointed specifically to internet speed, which can vary significantly between markets and have an immediate effect on live betting. A report might show how long a player took to complete an action, but it does not necessarily reveal whether that delay came from the platform itself, the connection being used or the conditions surrounding the player at that moment.
Read Also: What African Players Really Want: Beyond Industry Assumptions
To solve this, Wilfrid argued that platforms need to be lightweight and reduce the number of steps involved in the player journey. This makes the experience faster and easier to navigate, without unnecessary stages between the player and the action they want to complete. The same thinking applies to the devices customers use. In markets where mobile is central to betting, storage limitations and device capabilities can affect whether a player keeps an application installed at all. He noted that if an app is too heavy, players dealing with storage constraints may simply just delete it. These are the considerations which form part of what localization should mean in practice.
“According to me, localization involves a lot of parameters such as the internet speed, local habits of players, type of devices that people are mostly using,” he shared.
Wilfrid said his experience has also shown him that there is no single African player profile. He is from Cameroon and has seen first-hand how player expectations can differ between Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Ghana. Internet conditions, payment methods, peak activity times and sporting preferences all vary from one market to another, and those differences matter when building a product for players in each country.
That country-level approach extends to the first interaction a player has with the platform. He described how WinWin Bet aims to make the opening experience relevant to the market in which the player is located. A user in Kenya, for example, should be able to see content connected to the country’s sporting interests and notreceiving exactly the same first screen as someone accessing the platform from another market.
Wilfrid pointed to deposits and withdrawals as a key part of the player journey and said the process should not require customers to leave the betting application to complete a transaction. On the platform, he said, clicking on deposit takes the player directly to a window where they can enter their payment details and complete the transaction without moving between different applications. The fewer steps involved, the easier the process becomes for the player, while also improving conversion.
The idea carries through to the rest of the platform. Olemba said some international operators make their products more complicated than they need to be, while many African players want something they can open and use without having to work out how it functions first. “In Africa, players like the simplest possible things,” he said. A lightweight platform, straightforward deposits and withdrawals and a journey that does not require a tutorial can make a significant difference.
His advice to new market entrants is for them to find something that gives the platform its own identity while still responding to the market. “They should not just copy and paste what others are doing. You should try to be different in your own way. Try to find something that differentiates you from others.”
