![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Centurity-City-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Carry1st<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Carry1st is based in Century City and was founded by Sierra Leone-born Cordel Robbin-Coker, who grew up in the US and worked in investment banking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This career brought him to sub-Saharan Africa, and after identifying the region’s investment opportunities, he partnered with one of his former Stanford classmates to invest in early-stage startups on the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robbin-Coker quickly learned that mobile adoption was about to increase exponentially – and after witnessing that even sports betting sites could thrive on the continent, he decided to set up Carry1st.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Robbin-Coker brought on two co-founders – Lucy Hoffman, a former colleague from Morgan Stanley, and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, who had senior experience in the mobile development sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under their leadership, the company released its first game, called Carry1st, which was a live trivia game where players could earn rewards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the success of this game, the three co-founders identified an opportunity to help other companies launch their games in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the company has thrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carry1st has since become a game publishing juggernaut in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It played a key role in the launch of Riot Games’ South African Valorant servers, and publishes several of the world’s most popular mobile games locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These titles include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n It has also developed its own mobile games, including Mine Rescue 2 – with a 4.3\/5 rating and over 500,000 downloads on the Google Play Store – and Mergedom – with a 4.3\/5 rating and over 10 million downloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Payfast also sells in-game currency for popular games like Valorant, Call of Duty: Mobile, Clash of Clans, and EA Sports FC Mobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carry1st even runs many esports competitions for the region, including the Carry1st Africa Cup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Carry1st Africa Up is a Call of Duty: Mobile esports tournament with a prize pool of $15,000 where the winner also qualified for the game’s World Championships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To date, total investment into Carry1st has surpassed $60 million and includes tech giants like Google, Riot Games, Sony, and BITKRAFT, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carry1st was founded by Sierra Leone-born Cordel Robbin-Coker, and is now based in Cape Town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":126454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[26586],"class_list":["post-126449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-carry1st"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126449"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126541,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126449\/revisions\/126541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Growing South African gaming<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Carry1st<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a>Century City<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"