For years, the virtual world of video games was the only place where Kenyan gamer Brian Diang’a felt safe from his abusive, alcoholic father and their unhappy home in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.
“Gaming was my only escape,” Diang’a said, describing a childhood mired in poverty and violence.
Popularly known by his online avatar “Beast,” the 28-year-old discovered video games when he was nine.
Photo: AFP
“My dad had become an alcoholic and he would come back home in a drunken stupor and beat up my mom. Home became somewhere I did not want to be,” Diang’a said.
His daily visits to gaming dens worried his mother, who believed they were a bad influence on her son and a distraction from his schoolwork.
“I would receive a beating from my mom every time she found me in these gaming parlors,” Diang’a said.
Far from being a gateway to the world of drugs and crime, his childhood pursuit has instead taken him to tournaments and offered lucrative opportunities to work with tech brands.
Today, he earns about 50,000 Kenyan shillings (US$429) per month in a country where youth unemployment remains a huge problem.
Diang’a never imagined that his childhood passion could lead to a professional career — until 2013.
“I bumped onto YouTube videos where I saw gamers abroad playing Mortal Kombat — a game that I frequently played to pass time — and getting paid up to US$5,000 to compete,” he said.
So he decided to try and join their ranks.
Diang’a is one of several Kenyan gamers trying to find their feet in a multibillion-dollar industry that is slowly making its way onto international platforms such as the inaugural Commonwealth e-sports championships, which is expected to feature Kenyan participation.
However, they are outliers in a society that has traditionally seen academic performance or exceptional athletic ability as the only route to success.
Law graduate Sylvia Gathoni said her gaming accomplishments surprised her parents.
In 2018, Gathoni, who plays Tekken under the name “Queen Arrow,” became the first Kenyan gamer to be signed by an international team, and is currently contracted to US-based UYU.
“The older generation has been wired to think that to be successful you have to go through a specified path which is — go to school, work hard in your academics and then pursue a particular career,” Gathoni said.
The sector faces major hurdles in Africa, such as slow Internet speeds and police scrutiny.
“There’s no structure at the moment, it is simply a group of friends who come together to play,” tournament organizer Ronny Lusigi. “For video gaming to transition into e-sports, it has to be organized and competitive.”
Nevertheless Diang’a, who now mentors young gamers in Kibera and organizes tournaments around Kenya, hopes to see video gaming “explode in Africa.”
“Gaming kept me sane while everything was falling apart. I want to see more people enter this culture of gaming,” he said.
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