Kicking Off the Jiwe Jams Game Dev Program

Max Musau -

Last Friday, we began something powerful at the Nairobi Game Development Center. We launched a 4-month journey that brings together educators, parents, emerging game developers, and digital artists under one vision — to grow and empower Kenya and Africa’s next generation of game creators.

The energy in the room was electric. Local representatives from USIU, Aura Vision Academy, Polycrest Academy, and Lite Academy joined us, alongside Nairobi’s indie game community — each person curious, passionate, and ready to contribute to the future of African games.

The evening wasn’t just about announcements — it was a conversation. During our open Q&A, tough and meaningful questions came to the surface:

  • How do we build ethical games?

  • Can we guide players to think critically about what they consume?

  • How will developers earn from their work?

We shared how Jiwe IO works — and what it stands for and how why we are motivated to be community driven through community co-creation and crowdfunding.


We made it clear: creators keep their work. Jiwe only takes a 5% transaction fee, and everything uploaded remains 100% owned by the developer.

Our platform supports mobile, WebGL, and partial PC development — and we’re focused on building with Unity, the most accessible engine for our devs today.

The vibe then shifted into excitement when we revealed our rhythm for the coming months (In case you are interested here is the program schedule from a previous post) :

  1. Virtual Game Developer Talks every Thursday 7pm to 8pm EAT
  2. Hybrid Technical sessions which will be online on discord and in-person every Friday at NGDC also at 7pm to 8pm EAT

We’re starting with Talks and technical sessions as we lead up t the game jam in May and we want to make it as intense, fun, and collaborative as possible.

There was also a lot of interest in doing beginner bootcamps, and while bootcamps aren’t part of this first rollout, they’re definitely on the horizon, we plan to see how we can run them collaboratively with Unity and possible Blender.

What we saw on Friday was a deep interest and a curiosity for a shared feeling that now is the time to build something truly ours together as we are looking to bring on board other partners from across the continent like the Tshimologong Game Lab in Joburg, South Africa, Africa Comicade in Lagos, Nigeria, Kayfo Games in Dakar, Senegal and Leti Arts in Ghana.

And we’re just getting started, look out for more!

You can view the program presentation shared during the event here: Google Slides