Author: Nkopane Tshehla, MD of Larocure (Pty) Ltd, Business Development and Strategic
Advisory Consultant
Executive Summary: The Mandate for Proactive Governance
Africa’s gambling industry is experiencing rapid digital transformation, driven by mobile technology, online platforms, and fintech integration. This development presents both immense opportunities and escalating risks for regulators tasked with safeguarding integrity, consumer protection, and compliance with global standards.
In this paper, I argue that the continent’s regulatory approach must urgently evolve from reactive enforcement to proactive, technology-enabled governance. By integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies, regulators can strengthen Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF), and Responsible Gambling (RG) frameworks while promoting transparency and traceability across digital gambling operations.
Effective regulation demands:
- Legal Modernisation: Developing a Model Digital Gambling Act or Continental Regulatory Sandbox Framework through the Gaming Regulators Africa Forum (GRAF) to harmonise oversight across member states.
- Cross-Sector Partnership: Establishing strong partnerships with digital and connectivity regulatory authorities (such as South Africa’s Independent Communications Authority, ICASA).
- Capacity Building: Investing in technical skills through a proposed GRAF Centre for Digital Regulatory Training and establishing a Gambling Regulatory Intelligence Network (GRIN) to facilitate regional data-sharing.
Ultimately, the future of African gambling regulation hinges on a coordinated ecosystem where technology, integrity, and responsible innovation coexist.
1. The Resolve of Digital Development
Africa’s gambling landscape is evolving at a pace never seen before. Digital platforms, mobile betting, and cross-border payment systems have transformed gambling into a dynamic, data-driven ecosystem. While this creates economic opportunity, it also increases the risks of financial crime, problem gambling, and digital exploitation.
For African regulators, this challenge is not an academic debate. The 2025 Sanctions, AML/Anti-Corruption, Ethics and Export Controls Conference, organised by the Middle East & Africa Compliance Association (MEACA) and recently held in Sandton, provided a timely reflection on these issues. In the session Leveraging Advanced Technologies: AI and Blockchain for AML/CTF Compliance, experts highlighted how technology, when properly governed, can be a powerful ally in combating financial crime and promoting responsible play. The key question is whether regulation can evolve fast enough to protect integrity in this rapidly expanding marketplace.
2. Bridging the Legislative Gap
Across the continent, many regulatory frameworks still reflect an analogue age. Legislative environments, including most Gambling Acts, were drafted before the emergence of digital betting, mobile money, and AI-driven gaming. This pre-digital focus has left significant gaps in regulating online gambling, data privacy, and cross-border payments.
There is a pressing need for a Model Digital Gambling Act or a Continental Regulatory Sandbox Framework, promoted through GRAF, to harmonise approaches across jurisdictions. This model must align with national data protection laws such as South Africa’s POPIA, Kenya’s Data Protection Act, and Nigeria’s NDPA, ensuring that digital oversight respects both privacy and transparency.
3. Integrating AI and Blockchain: The Regulatory Imperative
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies are redefining what modern supervision can achieve. By combining these tools, regulators can shift from reactive enforcement to continuous, intelligence-based oversight.
Harnessing AI for Predictive Compliance:
• AI enables predictive compliance monitoring, capable of spotting irregular betting patterns, synthetic player profiles, and money laundering activity in real time.
• The use of AI has become a minimum requirement for effective sanctions screening.
• AI plays a vital role in detecting suspicious financial activities and enhancing AML/CTF efforts.
• AI helps in maximising accurate and predictable revenue collection.
Harnessing Blockchain for Transparency and Security:
• Blockchain provides immutable, transparent records of transactions, winnings, and operator performance.
• It can securely link licensing data, beneficial ownership records, and player wallets under secure, auditable systems.
• The technology provides transparency and security in financial transactions, with strong implications for strengthening AML/CTF.
4. Responsible Gambling and Connectivity Oversight
Responsible Gambling (RG) is a regulatory obligation, not just a moral accessory.
• Proactive RG: AI-powered behavioural analytics can identify excessive play, risky spending, and emotional triggers linked to gambling harm, supporting proactive RG interventions.
• Cross-Border Protection: Blockchain can securely anchor cross-jurisdictional self-exclusion systems, ensuring excluded players remain protected even when crossing digital borders.
To sustain these systems, gambling regulators must establish strong collaboration with digital and connectivity regulatory authorities such as ICASA in South Africa, ZICTA in Zambia, and the Communications Authority of Kenya. This collaboration is essential for enabling real-time monitoring of digital gambling activities, protecting consumer data, and preventing illegal or offshore operations. Shared frameworks should address unified digital licensing, cybersecurity standards, and real-time network monitoring of illegal sites.
5. South Africa’s FATF Journey and Leadership Potential
South Africa’s experience with the FATF grey-listing served as a catalyst for institutional reform, compelling regulators to modernise compliance mechanisms and adopt risk-based supervision practices.
In the gambling sector, this experience provides a powerful blueprint. By embedding RegTech and SupTech tools—such as automated AML/CTF monitoring, blockchain-based licensing verification, and AI-driven risk scoring—South Africa can not only meet FATF’s 40 Recommendations but also shape a regional model of proactive supervision. This leadership will position South Africa as a continental pioneer in digital integrity.
6. Integrating Payment Systems and Fintech Oversight in the Mobile Money Era
Modern gambling is deeply intertwined with digital payment ecosystems. Mobile money, electronic wallets, and cross-border fintech platforms process millions of gambling transactions daily—often outside traditional banking channels. In many African jurisdictions, mobile money has become the default financial infrastructure, and its prevalence presents unique AML/CTF risks that require technological intervention.
Operationalising Technology in Mobile Money Systems:
• Blockchain for Transaction Transparency: Blockchain provides immutable, transparent records of transactions, including those conducted via mobile money, securing and auditing funds transfers regardless of the channel.
• AI for Risk Detection: AI enables predictive compliance monitoring to analyse the patterns and velocities of mobile money transfers, helping to spot irregular betting patterns and money laundering activity in real time.
• Alignment: This systemic integration ensures adherence to ongoing reforms and alignment with FATF Recommendation 15 (New Technologies).
Mandate for Cooperative Oversight:
To manage financial risk within these non-traditional banking channels, gambling regulators must collaborate with central banks, payment regulators, and fintech authorities to ensure shared oversight of AML/CTF risks within these digital transaction ecosystems. GRAF could facilitate joint regulatory workshops between gambling and fintech supervisors to develop coherent KYC standards, reporting formats, and transaction monitoring mechanisms across Africa’s payment networks.
7. ESG, Consumer Protection, and Public Trust
Globally, regulators are increasingly linking compliance with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles. In the gambling sector, this translates into social responsibility, transparency, and fair consumer outcomes. Regulators may require licensed operators to publish annual Integrity and Responsible Gambling Reports. Embedding ESG metrics in licensing conditions elevates public confidence and reinforces the industry’s social licence to operate.
8. Data Sovereignty and Digital Independence
Africa’s digital transformation must be founded on data sovereignty—ensuring that critical information, including gambling data, remains within secure continental jurisdictions. Currently, many regulatory systems rely on offshore hosting. To strengthen sovereignty, collaboration with ICT regulators is essential to establish local data centres, blockchain nodes, and AI infrastructure within Africa. This reinforces the continent’s ownership of its regulatory future.
9. Capacity-Building and Knowledge Transfer
Technology can empower regulators, but only if they possess the skills to use it effectively. Africa needs a deliberate programme to build technical and analytical capacity across gambling boards. GRAF could establish a Centre for Digital Regulatory Training, focused on AI literacy, forensic analytics, and data ethics. Ultimately, technology should enhance human judgment, not replace it.
10. Public-Private Partnerships and Innovation Sandboxes
Establishing Regulatory Innovation Labs or RegTech Sandboxes would facilitate responsible collaboration between regulators, operators, and fintechs to co-test responsible gambling tools and data analytics in a controlled environment. These sandboxes help align compliance innovation with ethical standards and accelerate adaptive regulation.
11. Regional Cooperation and GRAF’s Coordination Role
The Gaming Regulators Africa Forum (GRAF) is the continent’s most strategic vehicle for driving regulatory alignment. Through GRAF, regulators can create a Gambling Regulatory Intelligence Network (GRIN)—a secure, continent-wide data platform for risk alerts, AML/CTF typologies, and Responsible Gambling indicators. In the long term, GRAF could champion a Pan-African Digital Gambling Governance Charter, establishing common principles for integrity, ethics, and responsible innovation.
12. Conclusion
Innovation without integrity leads only to instability. The digital gambling revolution is unstoppable, and whether it strengthens or undermines integrity depends entirely on the choices African regulators make today.
By uniting regulators, ICT authorities, and financial supervisors, Africa can engineer a continent-wide system of digital trust—one that balances innovation with ethics, efficiency with transparency, and growth with protection. By aligning technology, governance, and human integrity, Africa can define a gambling landscape that is not only digital, but dignified, secure, and distinctly African in its trustworthiness.
Author Bio
Nkopane Tshehla is a Business Development and Strategic Advisory Consultant specialising in gambling, lottery, and regulatory transformation across Southern Africa. His work bridges governance, digital compliance, and responsible gambling, with projects spanning the SADC region. He is a strong advocate for technology-driven regulation rooted in ethics, collaboration, and African leadership.
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