Esports are booming in Africa – but can its infrastructure keep pace?

Kweku Mensah aka Babushka of Ghana’s Aura 233 team at the Carry1st Africa Cup finals in Nairobi on 24 November. Photograph: Edwin Ndeke/The Guardian

On a recent Sunday afternoon in an upmarket neighbourhood of Nairobi, Daniel Badu was rapidly pressing the screen of his mobile phone, headphones wrapped around his head, his elbows resting on a pillow.

Badu and his four teammates in the Aura 233 team, all decked in black-and-yellow kits and representing Ghana, were taking on Kenya’s Delta eSports in the finals of the inaugural Carry1st Africa Cup, a continental tournament for the first-person shooter video game Call of Duty: Mobile.