Africa’s longest-running board game convention hoping to double attendance this year after ongoing Kickstarter passes goal

Africa’s longest-running board games convention, AB Con in Nigeria, has set its sights on more than doubling attendance at this year’s event after pulling past its funding target for its latest Kickstarter campaign.

The African Boardgames Convention hopes to attract up to 3,000 people for the ninth edition of the event in November, with new features this year set to include a dedicated zone for deep strategy games and an almost 50% increase in the overall number of gaming tables, lead convenor Kenechukwu Ogbuagu – known as KC – told BoardGameWire.

That “ultimate goal” for attendance is well ahead of the roughly 1,300 who visited the 2024 convention – but the event has shown rapid growth in recent years, with attendance having risen steadily from 750 in 2022 and about 1,000 a year later.

AB Con has raised more than $10,000 so far through this year’s crowdfund, beating its $9,000 goal – and is now eyeing a series of stretch goals for the remaining ten days of the campaign, culminating in the convention being put on across two days rather than one.

The event previously raised more than $23,700 through its 2021 Kickstarter campaign, and self-funded for the following two years – but was forced to return to crowdfunding in 2024 after soaring inflation in Nigeria weighed heavily on its finances.

KC told BoardGameWire, “Our biggest challenge is funding. Our economy is still beat with inflation. And sourcing fund locally is a huge challenge due to the unpopularity of modern games in the region, [a problem AB Con exists to solve].”

AB Con says that before its launch in 2016 “it was extremely difficult to identify a platform for tabletop game designers, content creators, publishers, manufacturers or hobby enthusiasts in Nigeria”, despite the country’s estimated 200 million population.

Between AB Con’s work and the efforts of KC’s Nigerian board game company NIBCARD – which won a Diana Jones Award in 2021 for its role in driving the local tabletop community – the number of known modern board games from Nigerian designers has soared from 10 to more than 100, with the number of designers growing from three to 25.

But more work remains to be done. AB Con said on its Kickstarter page, “It’s not been an easy journey, typical of the early stage of building something new.

“Around Nigeria, and indeed Africa, there are many who love playing games but don’t know there is a space and structure to explore even further.

“So, we are asking you to help build our community and space – our industry. We are asking you to help build an ecosystem for designers, publishers and gamers to meet and build collaborations.”

Corporate backers of last year’s Kickstarter included tabletop licensing and consulting agency MOB Vanguard, who return as a sponsor this year, and publisher Arcane Wonders.

Locally-designed games featuring at this year’s event are set to include Na Lie, Village People, The Outsider, Everyday Christian, Keep Safe and National Cake, KC added.

He said, “This campaign is more than funding the event. Making the campaign visible in the global board gaming community will amplify African voices in global game design, and build an ecosystem that allows tabletop gaming to thrive across the continent.”

Since AB Con’s creation in 2016, it has been joined in the African board game event calendar by Festival Pousse Pions in Yaoundé, Cameroon since 2019, and the African Games Festival in Dakar, Senegal since 2022.

Anyone keen to help support AB Con in financing and growing this year’s event should visit the event’s Kickstarter page here. The campaign runs until August 11.