Every day, millions of Africans share opinions about what will happen next. On social media, in group chats and across online communities, people debate which artist will dominate the charts, which football team will win, how political developments will unfold and what a new business announcement could mean for the market.
These conversations generate a constant flow of information. Yet, much of it remains scattered across platforms, making it difficult to track how public expectations change as events develop.
Prediction markets are emerging as one way to organise that information, offering a mechanism for people to express expectations about future events and observe how those expectations shift over time.
The model is gaining traction globally. Platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi have brought prediction markets into mainstream conversations, attracting users interested in forecasting outcomes across politics, sports, economics and popular culture.
According to the Pew Research Center, combined monthly trading volume on the two platforms grew from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to approximately $24 billion in April 2026.
Beyond the growth in activity, the model is attracting interest for its potential to provide another perspective on what people expect to happen. Unlike traditional surveys, which typically capture responses at a particular point in time, prediction markets can reflect changing expectations as new information becomes available.
This makes them potentially useful in areas where public opinion and expectations move quickly. Businesses tracking consumer trends, for instance, could gain another signal about emerging interests, while researchers could examine how expectations respond to major economic announcements, cultural moments or political developments.
The approach does not replace traditional research. Rather, it offers another way to observe collective expectations, particularly when combined with surveys, social listening and other sources of information.
African technology companies are beginning to explore what this model could look like within the continent’s own digital and cultural landscape.
One of them is Wysemarket, a Nigeria-based prediction-market platform that allows users to forecast outcomes across entertainment, politics, sports, culture and other areas.
For the company, the opportunity lies in creating a structured way for people to express what they believe will happen and make those expectations measurable.
“Africa is home to the world’s most digitally native and adaptive population. By launching Wysemarket, we aren’t just giving users a platform to forecast; we are giving them a stake in the future,” said Femi Laniyan, CEO and Co-Founder of Wysemarket.
The idea builds on a familiar aspect of digital culture. Online audiences already make predictions, challenge one another’s opinions and follow developments as events unfold. What prediction markets introduce is a more structured environment for expressing those views and tracking how they change.
A conversation about an emerging artist, for example, might begin with competing opinions about whether a new release will become a hit. As streaming numbers, public reactions and other information emerge, expectations may change. Similar shifts can occur around sporting events, political developments and business decisions.
In this sense, prediction markets could offer more than a platform for forecasting individual outcomes.They could also create a record of how collective expectations evolve in response to new information.
“Our goal is to turn collective intuition into a valuable data asset that empowers individuals and informs markets across the continent,” Laniyan said.
For businesses and researchers, the longer-term question is whether these signals can offer useful insights into consumer behaviour, emerging trends and public expectations. When participation is sufficient and markets are well designed, changes in market expectations may provide an additional perspective on developments that traditional research methods can take longer to capture.
However, the quality of those signals matters. Poorly defined questions, limited participation and insufficient market activity can affect the reliability of results. Prediction-market data must therefore be interpreted carefully and considered alongside other evidence, rather than treated as a definitive measure of public opinion or a guaranteed forecast.
For African platforms, building credibility will depend on addressing these challenges while developing markets that reflect the interests and realities of local audiences. That means going beyond importing a global technology model to consider the questions people across the continent actually care about.
Wysemarket’s focus on entertainment, politics, sports and culture reflects this opportunity. These are areas where African audiences are already highly engaged, and where expectations can shift rapidly as new developments emerge.
The broader opportunity extends to how Africa’s technology ecosystem captures and organises information generated by its growing digital population. Much of the continent’s online activity is already driven by conversations about culture, business, technology and everyday life.
Finding ways to turn some of that activity into structured, interpretable signals could open new possibilities for businesses, researchers and other decision-makers.
Prediction markets are still developing, and their value will depend on how effectively platforms establish trust, encourage participation and produce meaningful information. But as the model gains attention globally, African companies have an opportunity to explore how it can serve their own audiences.
The next phase of this development may not be defined solely by how accurately platforms predict individual events. It could also be shaped by how effectively they capture changing expectations and make that information useful.
For Africa, that presents an opportunity to turn the conversations already happening across its digital communities into another resource for understanding what might come next.