Online Gambling Has Millions of Young Africans Battling Addiction

Slouched against a wall in the morning gloom, his purple hoodie pulled low over his eyes to hide his face, Brave Luhanga is desperate for a win. For a second consecutive day, he’s at a local betting shop, wagering the equivalent of 65¢ earned selling snacks to classmates on soccer games played more than 5,000 miles away from the mud tracks and tarpaulin storefronts of Area 25, his neighborhood in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. “I bet on five games,” he says. “But I don’t know the teams.”

Luhanga has visited the shop—a cinder block shack with a corrugated metal roof, containing little more than a wooden betting counter, fading posters and a TV—almost every week for more than a year, sometimes bringing his own cash, sometimes with money borrowed from his mother. After calculating for a few seconds, he ruefully acknowledges that his losses outweigh his winnings. He’s 15, three years under the legal betting age, but he’s usually accompanied by a 14-year-old friend—taller and a bit older-looking—who can often bet if someone at the shop says Luhanga is too young. “Sometimes they throw me out,” he says. “I just give the money to others.”