In this interview, Dawid Muller tells CalvinAyre.com’s Rebecca Liggero that African nations are making progress toward regulating gambling in the region.
Often viewed as the world’s next economic frontier, Africa has been one of the drivers of growth amid a persisting global economic malaise.
African nations, led by the sub-Saharan economies, will see a continued flow of investments and will be seen gradually advancing toward the top ranks of emerging economies hitherto dominated by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
For this reason, investors like Dawid Muller of Gidani Ltd. predict that it will be just a matter of time before Africa to be the next gaming frontier as the region looks for means of revenue growth.
“Africa is looking at tourism, hotels, gambling (to fuel its economy). There’s a pressure now on them to start licensing casinos, online gaming,” Muller told CalvinAyre.com.
The challenge that most African nations faces is for them to swiftly pass laws that will regulate the gambling industry. Some of the laws, according to Muller, have become antiquated and is not anymore applicable to the current gambling set-up.
Muller pointed out that there are other countries that takes more or less than 10 years before necessary laws are enacted.
“Plenty of the countries that has amended their legislation and has brought in regulatory frameworks but other haven’t. Politically, they are struggling to get the legislation amended or new legislation enforced,” Muller said. “But definitely there’s an appetite, because of course it is a revenue. So the longer you take. If you don’t legalize it, you can’t enforce rules and regulations. So there’s an appetite there.”
He also pointed out that African nations are keen to learn how to properly regulate the gambling industry by joining regional conferences and associations and by exchanging notes with countries that have gambling models in place.
And they learn from there. We have a lot of responses of from countries to come and assist with their legislation and the drafting of legislation. Europeans are concerned about what happens to their players. What happens to the consumer, how do I protect the people in our country,” Muller said. “If Africa opens up, there’s going to be online gaming, their people will play in Africa. My message to them is rather assist Africa, most of these regulatory models in Europe and other parts of the country have been design and developed and tested. Let Africa share these lessons learned.”
