Josh Jones on How Rise & Hustle Is Shaping Africa’s Mobile Gaming and Crypto Future

In this exclusive interview with iGaming AFRIKA, Josh Tromans-Jones, CEO of Rise & Hustle, outlines how the platform is reshaping Africa’s mobile gaming scene and its expansion strategy.

What do you see as the key need for an African player in adopting various gamification options?

African players are hungry for meaningful engagement and are also extremely entrepreneurial. Gamification that offers status, progression, community, and meaningful rewards resonates deeply. But for adoption, three pillars matter most: low data usage, clear rewards, and mobile-first design. Players don’t just want entertainment, they want to feel like they’re climbing a ladder, earning as they go, and doing so within a social ecosystem that reflects their reality.

What inspired the creation of Rise & Hustle, and what specific gaps in Nigeria’s mobile gaming ecosystem was the platform designed to address?

Rise & Hustle was born out of frustration with low-quality, parasitic, cash-grab games that don’t respect African users. We saw an opportunity to create a world-class gaming platform, built for mobile, that fuses free-to-play fun with real rewards. Nigeria’s gaming space lacked consistency in experience, transparency in rewards, and quality in storytelling. We filled that void the only way we saw possible – by owning all our own IP. Everything from our platform to our games, to our rewards system, we built from the bottom up.

What factors influenced the selection of crypto tokens for free-to-play layers, and how does this benefit users in Nigeria with the e-Naira recently introduced?

Trust is absolutely pivotal to everything that we do. The use of Cryptocurrencies (Rise in particular) makes it extremely transparent and verifiable that we are giving away the rewards that we say we are. With the rise of the e-Naira and digital currency awareness, Nigerian users are becoming more comfortable with wallet-based ecosystems, which makes our Rise introduction a perfect fit.

How has the experience around wallets, token conversion, and withdrawals been designed for clarity and accessibility?

We hide the complexity. Users don’t need to know what a blockchain is to earn or withdraw. We use a series ofmicroservices to manage user rewards seamlessly in the background. Our goal is creating a wallet experience that feels familiar and trustworthy to the customer. That’s how we reach mass adoption.

Why Nigeria as a launchpad, and how will that guide expansion into Kenya and Ghana?

Nigeria is Africa’s largest gaming, crypto, and mobile market, with the fastest-growing Gen Z population. When you look at these factors combined with the entrepreneurial flair that Nigerians have, it was an obvious choice. Ghana is the next obvious choice because of its vibrant population with an equally matched entrepreneurial spirit. Our blueprint – lightweight games + social mechanics + real rewards – translates well but will be hyper-localised to reflect each market’s nuances.

Read Also: BCLB Pushes for Responsible Gambling and Unified Regulation Across Africa

What safeguards are in place to ensure Rise & Hustle avoids the fate of short-lived token platforms?

Sustainability is core to our design. We:

• Cap rewards to avoid runaway inflation.
• Use tiers and time-based unlocks to pace distribution.
• Continuously recycle tokens through in-game utility (entry fees, squad boosts, loot boxes).
• Build non-token value via badges, status, leaderboards so not everything depends on crypto.

We also measure retention obsessively and adjust rewards based on player LTV, not hype.

How is engagement balanced with responsible gaming practices to protect vulnerable users?

We take this very seriously. We’ve built state-of-the-art RG tools that cover everything from exclusion periods and time-outs to automatically promoting the most sustainable games to users.

AI is at the forefront of our development in this area. We use algorithms to ensure the safety of our players but still believe fundamentally in including genuine player reviews as part of this feedback cycle.

One advantage that we have with our F2P model is that we remove the financial risks that users may encounter on other real money gaming sites.

We believe in “play with purpose” — not manipulation. As we scale, we’ll work with local regulators to embed ethical gameplay practices across Africa.

Beyond gaming, what long-term utility do you envision for Rise Token?

Rise Token is more than a game currency, we really do see it as the portal into our ecosystem. We are constantly developing utility, and at a rapid rate. Future utility includes:

• Squad staking and level-ups
• Governance rights on reward structures
• Token-gated tournaments and events (both physical and online)
• And eventually, integrations into other DeFi protocols, NFTs, or third-party games.
  

What is your advice to brands building on blockchain for Africa?

You don’t need to over-complicate things. Just put the user at the forefront of everything you do. If I was to go into more detail I would say.

• UX is vital – it must be smooth, and it must be fast. There is too much competition these days for you not to get this part perfect.
  
• Trust is everything. The UX is a vital part of this, but there are other parts to it. We have invested significantly in building up those community connections on the ground.
  
• Choose the right partners. This can’t be overstated enough. You will be sold the dream by many, who themselves are living in fantasy land. Ask for credentials, ask-for real concrete examples of what they have delivered and get proof that they have done what they have said they have done. After this, work hard on making that relationship as strong as possible.