Ray Lee, TaDa Gaming: “Africa is a priority expansion region for us”

TaDa Gaming is accelerating its African expansion through localisation, strategic partnerships and compliance-driven growth. Ray Lee explains why South Africa is now a key market and how the company is building scalable, mobile-first operations across the region.

Exclusive interview.- Two months into 2026 already, and the industry’s global exhibition roadshow is well and truly rolling. With ICE and AIBC behind us and as SiGMA Africa approaches, we caught up with Ray Lee, business development director, TaDa Gaming. Having won SiGMA Africa Slot Newcomer of the Year in 2025, clearly, TaDa Gaming will have a lot to live up to. He sat down with us to share insights on TaDa Gaming’s overall African strategy; what content the innovative Taiwanese provider will showcase at Stand 091 in Cape Town this March 4 – 5, and why South Africa is so firmly on their radar.

TaDa Gaming began its African expansion in emerging markets. Can you give us some background on why you chose this route and what it means for your future growth?

Africa overall is a priority expansion region for us. As a data-reliant business, our initial drive was designed to give us the building blocks to understand player motivation, cultural and social mores, legal and technological aspects and the opportunities and restrictions of each market. We are now accessible in over 15 countries to date, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania.

So basically, we have benefited from our PESTEL and SWOT approach within each country or region and secured successful local and national partnerships which deliver engagement and retention with players.

This also means we have built credibility within the African igaming industry overall, enhancing our position with leading local and transnational operators as we now have valuable know-how alongside our tailored and localised portfolio of 220+ releases. 

And this is delivering success in our recent approach to the more established and sophisticated South African market.

What are the key elements or know-how that TaDa Gaming has learnt in Africa so far that helped with your South African entry?

Mobile gaming, regulation and compliance for future-proofing both products and relationships; expert localisation; and tailored releases are the key takeaways that our learning across Africa brought to our South African pitch.

Given that mobile gaming drives nearly 90 per cent of gaming revenue across much of Africa, we further optimised our games for faster loading in low-bandwidth environments, meaning TaDa Gaming releases give lightweight deployment without sacrificing quality. 

These adjustments are crucial for adoption in markets with varied internet infrastructure and an important part of our global growth strategy through building mobile-first gaming experiences. 

As we are a multi-licensed provider – and we anticipate only further global regulation – our approach is always compliance-led. Operators across Africa who are looking for long-term success prefer to work with companies like us, which have done the heavy lifting and bring valuable insights based on experience and market knowledge.

Our glocalisation strategy for global core mechanics/local content has successfully driven our strategy to date. Ensuring these adjustments speak to the target market means the games feel made FOR them; so releases including the Fortune Gems series, Crazy 777, Coin Tree, 40 Sparkling Crown, Devil Fire 2 and Rapid Gems 777 have all been very well received by players across different African markets and jurisdictions, building our brand reputation for tailored gaming experiences.

Alongside our responsible gaming practices, expert localisation and higher levels of engagement and retention, this scalability with series and sequels appeals to players and operators.

“Our glocalisation strategy for global core mechanics/local content has successfully driven our strategy to date.”
Ray Lee, Business Development Director, TaDa Gaming.

How important are partnerships with local or national platforms in Africa?

For TaDa Gaming, partnerships with local, national and trans-national platforms are always critical for success.

Our initial entry to the African markets began with betPawa: this gave us strategic opportunities to enhance localisation and efficient distribution for our games to reach players more effectively across multiple markets.

However, attending industry events like SiGMA Africa to showcase our portfolio and meet both operators and players is also an efficient method to create new connections across this vast continent. 

The success of this dual approach can be seen in our most recent partnership agreements with some of South Africa’s pre-eminent operators. We’re excited about this significant development and its future impact on our growth and will officially announce these new collaborations shortly.

Do you see licensing and regulation as key to scalability?

The short answer is yes. We hold a growing list of licences and accreditation, including from the MGA, UKGC, Sweden’s Spelinspektionen, Romanian ONJN, the Hellenic Gaming Commission and the Ontario AGCO. 

While this legitimisation of our games in regulated markets encourages operators globally to partner with us, it also opens many doors in evolving and regulating regions through our understanding of how regulations shape our games and gamification tools, but without removing the ‘entertainment value’ that players want. 

This future-proofing approach builds trust with players from the outset, makes our releases harder to copy and allows operators to scale without re-engineering their entire game stack as/when regulations are applied. It’s a commercially sensible decision and, as African markets mature, this will only become more relevant for operators. 

South Africa is a key destination for us in Q1 2026 as it is currently in this evolving position. We have successfully built credibility there to unlock scale and speed up integration and distribution as mentioned through the new partnerships with market-leading platforms: plus we have secured RGS and RNG Letters of Certification (LOC) via the Light & Wonder Inc. licence, which enabled authorisation for our official operations in South Africa.

Nine of our games have been successfully certified to date for this market, so attending the SiGMA Africa Summit is an especially important event for us this year. 

TaDa Gaming itself has evolved from ‘newcomer’ in African slot gaming to a more established and valuable status with a diverse portfolio and intrinsic know-how through local and national partnerships and we want to showcase this evolution to potential new partners.

“South Africa is a key destination for us in Q1 2026 as it is currently in this evolving position. We have successfully built credibility there to unlock scale and speed up integration and distribution.”

Ray Lee, Business Development Director, TaDa Gaming.

What else can we expect to see from TaDa Gaming at SiGMA Africa this year? What are you highlighting?

A major draw will be how we show our highly flexible customisation capability through branded games. This new direction gives operators bespoke ways to create exclusive content and create differentiation for their brands.

We will also reveal our new gamification tools and additions. So, GiftCode, our one-click, instant reward tool, which took an industry award for innovation in 2025, has been optimised with a new addition, Hot Hand, to boost engagement. Hot Hand is also designed to be shared through influencers and streamers for high-impact gaming in real time.

New tool Highlights lets players store, rewatch and share their most important experiences on social media and create authentic user-generated content. In addition to enhanced retention and a new stream of free exposure for operators from players, these new updates expand collaboration opportunities with affiliates, an important part of TaDa Gaming’s 2026 growth strategy.

Senior teams from both the Taiwan and Malta offices will be hosting Stand 091 and we are looking forward to meeting delegates attending the summit. Meetings can be pre-booked by emailing [email protected] but everyone is always welcome to drop by.

As always, we have a lot of news and new products to share with colleagues and clients – both existing and potential. We are looking forward to learning and sharing insights at the summit for another successful year of African igaming.