If you want to find a quietly heating up gambling rising star on the map of Africa, Cameroon is undoubtedly the fastest growing one.
This football powerhouse, once known for street lotteries and football betting, has been rapidly transitioning to an online and mobile new gambling market in recent years.
According to data growth signs, Cameroon's iGaming market is entering its "startup phase".
By 2025, Cameroon's 💵 total gambling revenue (GGR) is expected to reach $290 million, of which the online gambling portion accounts for $134 million, about 46%.
In the African continent, the proportion of online gambling is a very prominent figure.
According to the iGB "The Rise of Digital" report, most African countries still have online gambling shares in the 20%-30% range, while 💵 Cameroon is almost close to 50%. This means that Cameroon's online gambling is not catching up, but is exploding.
More importantly, its growth is still continuing:
According to forecasts, by 2029 the online market will grow at an annual compound growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2%, increasing from $134 million to about $164 million. Although the growth rate does not seem astonishing at first glance, in a market with a small base, this $30 million net increase is almost equivalent to the annual turnover of a medium-sized operator.
⚽️ Football is faith, and also the engine of gambling
Cameroon can be said to be the heart of African football. And sports betting is the commercial extension of this culture.
In Cameroon, sports betting accounts for about 60% of online betting volume, most of which is concentrated in the Premier League, Champions League, and African Nations Cup.
From a data perspective, the 18-35 age group is the main force of Cameroon's gambling, accounting for more than 70% of total players. This group of players is not afraid of digital payments, does not reject online identity, and does not resist the entertainment consumption method of "trying their luck".
In terms of gender ratio, males are the main force, but female players are growing, especially in online lotteries and casual casino iGaming games.
Stacking all the data together also forms a very clear trend curve:
Player penetration rate will reach 18.3% by 2025, and the total number of users is expected to exceed 6 million by 2030.
The average revenue per user (ARPU) is about $102, while the overall population structure remains young, and income is still rising.
This is very rare in the gambling industry. Most emerging markets either rely on new acquisitions or are supported by high ARPU players, while Cameroon is rising in both directions.
💡 Regulation, advertising, and redistribution of payments
The growth of online gambling in Cameroon actually relies heavily on the spread of the internet. (2020 Africa Digital Channel Trends Report (https://t.me/pasauseful/13))
In the past five years, Cameroon's internet penetration rate has almost doubled, and mobile payments (especially Orange Money and MTN Mobile Money) cover almost all cities and towns. Players do not need a bank card, as long as they have a mobile number, they can recharge, bet, and withdraw.
This "payment equity" completely opens the last barrier to gambling, allowing a complete set of betting actions to be completed with a mobile phone. This infrastructure change is the core reason why Cameroon's online gambling can explode in a short time.
But in early 2025, the Cameroon government introduced a "centralized payment" directive called INTOUCH Cameroon, requiring all online gambling payments to go through a government-designated platform. This policy has caused drastically different reactions within the industry.
The centralized payment policy of INTOUCH Cameroon brings all the financial flows of the Cameroon gambling industry into the regulatory channel, meaning that small and offshore operators can no longer freely access wallet systems such as Orange Money or MTN Mobile Money.
For operators, ❗️ centralized payment interfaces mean a steep rise in compliance thresholds, high access costs, and strict technical requirements, and once they fail the INTOUCH review, they lose the mainstream recharge channels; for offshore operators, the original reliance on gray PSP or cross-border wallet paths may be blocked by regulation.
Simply put, this policy directly turns payment into a "minefield" of regulation, and any non-compliant interface may become a target for elimination.
With the centralization of payments and the perfection of regulations, the market structure in Cameroon is undergoing reshaping.
In August 2025, Google officially lifted the ban on Cameroon gambling ads, allowing licensed platforms to promote their services on Google Ads—this means that the compliant market can finally enter the global advertising system.
Regular enterprises' brand exposure becomes more significant, but at the same time, it squeezes out gray traffic.
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The user base in the Cameroon market is steadily growing, and the increase in mobile payment and internet penetration rates provides a solid growth soil and long-term development potential for online gambling, virtual games, and related entertainment industries.
But in Cameroon, the wave of compliance is irreversible, and offshore operators must make a choice between "short-term gray benefits" and "long-term compliant survival".
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