African gambling regulators are set to begin drafting a cooperation framework at SiGMA World in Rome, with the programme focused on information exchange and enforcement rather than replacing national gambling laws.
The Gaming Regulators Africa Forum (GRAF) and SiGMA will host the workshop on 5 November at Fiera Roma. The organiser describes its intended output as the Rome Working Draft, Version 0.1, continuing discussions held at SiGMA Africa in Cape Town.
Five Working Groups Will Develop Recommendations
The current agenda puts practical drafting after two morning panels. Delegates will split into five groups covering information-sharing arrangements, legal and institutional structures, enforcement cooperation, regulatory capacity and stakeholder communication.
The groups are expected to test how their recommendations could operate, before presenting them in a plenary discussion. GRAF will consolidate their contributions to inform the developing framework.
This sequence places the workshop at the proposal-building stage. It does not establish an adopted agreement, a common African licence or a change to any operator’s existing authorisation.
National and Provincial Authorities Feature in the Programme
Listed participants include representatives of South African authorities, Nigeria’s Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority, Mauritius’s Gambling Regulatory Authority and Uganda’s National Lotteries and Gaming Regulatory Board. Rwanda Development Board is also represented in the published programme.
Bonga Mngoma of the KwaZulu-Natal Economic Regulatory Authority and Zoé Siwa of the Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board are named as facilitators. GRAF president Mabutho Zwane is scheduled to join the opening remarks.
The panels will examine approaches to cooperation elsewhere and the practical difficulties of cross-border gambling oversight, including illegal markets and gaps in information sharing. Industry participation is included alongside regulatory perspectives.
Rome Discussions Put Cooperation Before Harmonisation
The workshop follows a regulatory panel held at the summit on 3 November. SiGMA’s account reports support for closer cooperation while recognising differences between national systems, constitutions and regulatory resources.
The account identifies information exchange and bilateral arrangements as practical starting points. It also reports concerns about whether authorities have the staff, technology and funding needed to apply the rules they already hold.
Those discussions explain the workshop’s narrower ambition: developing ways for authorities to work together without first requiring a single continental legal system. The organiser explicitly distinguishes cooperation from aligning all African gambling laws.
For an operator working across jurisdictions, the current development is therefore a planned process for regulatory collaboration, not a replacement for country-specific obligations. The content and status of any resulting draft will depend on what delegates produce and GRAF subsequently publishes.
iGW Market Relevance Opinion
Operators should distinguish shared regulatory intelligence from shared market access. More cooperation could change how authorities exchange information or coordinate enforcement, but this workshop does not transfer a licence between countries.
The next substantive signal is the published draft and the proposed responsibilities.
Sources: SiGMA organiser’s workshop announcement, Current official SiGMA World agenda
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