Abiola Olaniran, the founder of Gamsole and one of Africa’s first angel investors in tech, has died at the age of 36. He passed away on Wednesday, July 16, and was buried the same day in a private ceremony, sources close to the family confirmed.
Olaniran was a quiet but influential figure in Africa’s tech scene. A software engineer, he turned his passion for coding into one of the continent’s most successful mobile gaming companies.
While studying at Obafemi Awolowo University, Olaniran led his team to win the 2010 Microsoft Imagine Cup, a national competition for student developers. In 2012, he founded Gamsole in Lagos, at a time when the African gaming industry was still in its early stages.
Choosing the Windows Phone store as his starting point, Olaniran created colorful and popular games that quickly gained fans not just in Nigeria but beyond. By 2015, Gamsole had been downloaded over 10 million times across Windows Phone, Android, and feature phone platforms.
That year, Gamsole launched its flagship game, Gidi Run, partnering with MTN to introduce new ways of monetizing games in Africa.
Abiola Olaniran’s work helped put African game development on the global map, inspiring a new generation of tech entrepreneurs. His death is a big loss to the tech community across the continent.
