How to Check a Casino Licence in South Africa After the Anjouan Report and Ghana's Cross-Border Checks

What Ghana's Gaming Commission said about operators that move between jurisdictions

If you want to check a casino licence in South Africa, a good place to start is a short statement from Ghana that landed last week. On 15 October 2026 the African Lotteries and Gaming Association (ALGA) published remarks by Emmanuel Siisi Quainoo, the acting commissioner of Ghana's Gaming Commission. They were made at the ALGA CEOs Forum 2026, and the story was reported by Focus Gaming News on 16 October.

Quainoo said that when an operator applies for a licence in Ghana, the Commission looks at that operator's history in Africa and in the rest of the world. That includes whether the applicant has ever been removed from a jurisdiction because of misconduct. His reason was blunt: regulators have watched operators with a bad record leave one market and turn up in another, and thorough due diligence is the only defence.

He also tied the idea to a bigger goal. In his view, harmonising gambling regulation across African countries can begin with shared due diligence, backed by regulators swapping information with each other. ALGA added that regulators need to move from talking about policy to practical cooperation, including shared intelligence and common standards.

None of this is a new law, and it is not a South African decision. It is one regulator describing how it already works, as relayed by an industry body. But it shows how the people who issue licences think about the problem. A licence is only as meaningful as the checks that happened before it was granted, and those checks are weaker when nobody compares notes across borders.

It also fits what was said earlier in the ALGA forum, which was held in KwaZulu-Natal from 1 to 4 September 2026. According to the Focus Gaming News report on the ALGA CEOs Forum, regulators there talked about better data sharing and coordinated enforcement against unlicensed betting, because licensing rules differ so much from one African country to the next.

What the Guardian reported about Anjouan licences

The second piece of context comes from outside Africa's regulator circle. The Guardian investigation published on 19 October 2026 looked at gaming licences issued in the name of Anjouan, an island in the Union of Comoros in the Indian Ocean. Our own short news item on the story is here: Comoros authorities call Anjouan casino licensing illegal.

The paper reports that the public register of the Anjouan Gaming Authority lists nearly 1,500 licence holders, and that many of them specialise in crypto gambling. It says some of the casinos appear to target vulnerable customers and others have been accused of refusing to pay winnings. It also names several brands, and a spokesperson for one of them told the paper it was regulated by its own internal rules.

The most important claim for players is about the licence itself. The Anjouan Gaming website says its governing body is the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority, set up under Comoros law. According to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the Central Bank of the Comoros described the licensing regime as illegal activity by people misusing the country's name to look legitimate, and said the government is preparing legal action at home. The same spokesperson said British citizens have been identified and that the Comoros has asked the UK government and police for help with financial intelligence and law enforcement cooperation. The UK Treasury declined to comment.

The paper also reports on a London company, Anjouan Corporate Services, which it says offers help getting an Anjouan licence for about £19,000. It links that business to members of one family. A representative of the family told the Guardian that the company does not sell or issue gaming licences and has not done so since it was taken over in 2023, and that other providers are involved. We have not verified either side of that dispute, and you should read it as a set of competing claims.

An industry analyst quoted in the piece, Alun Bowden of Eilers and Krejcik Gaming, explained why a cheap licence is still worth buying. In his description, it gives players some reassurance and an apparent regulatory framework, which can make banks, payment providers and other partners more comfortable doing business with the operator. An industry source in the article also compared the roughly £20,000 cost of an Anjouan licence with about £80,000 for a Curaçao one.

Why a licence badge on a casino footer proves less than it looks

This section is our reading of the evidence above, not a reported fact. The lesson we take from Ghana and Anjouan together is that a licence logo in a casino footer is a claim, and a claim is not proof.

First, there is a difference between a licence that exists and a regulator that regulates. A badge tells you someone paid a fee and filled in a form. It does not tell you that anyone will investigate a complaint, force a payout, or remove a bad operator. If the Comoros authorities are right that the Anjouan scheme has no legal footing, a complaint to that body may lead nowhere. If the claim is disputed, you have at best an unclear route to a remedy.

Second, cheap licences encourage jurisdiction shopping. The cost gap mentioned in the Guardian piece, and Quainoo's comments about operators moving between markets, describe the same behaviour from two directions. When a stricter regulator tightens its rules, some operators look for a lighter one. Cross-border due diligence of the kind Ghana describes is meant to catch exactly that.

Third, the licence also does a job for the operator, which is to look reassuring to banks and payment providers. That is worth keeping in mind in South Africa, where the National Gambling Board has said it wants to work with financial institutions on using its verification list to stop unlicensed operators facilitating transactions through banks and payment providers. A badge that impresses a payment partner is not the same as protection for you.

None of this means every offshore licence is worthless. Licensing regimes differ in how seriously they take player complaints, and we are not ranking jurisdictions here. The point is narrower: the existence of a badge should start your checking, not end it.

What the NGB verified operators list does and does not tell you

South Africa has its own check, and it points the other way. The National Gambling Board runs a public register on its verified operators page on the National Gambling Board website. When we loaded it for this article, it said the list was last updated on 13 October 2026, that its data comes from the provincial licensing authorities, and that people should not gamble in any environment missing from the list.

The register shows each operator's name, type, address, route operator where relevant, licence number and province. The first page we saw was full of Eastern Cape totalisators, site operators and one racecourse, which gives a sense of how much of it covers physical premises. It is searchable, and it runs to well over a hundred pages.

The tool was launched earlier this year. According to iGaming Business coverage of the portal launch in April 2026, it was built with the provincial licensing authorities, lists licensed land-based and online operators, and is meant to be available to the public, law enforcement, tax authorities and financial institutions. We covered the current state of it in our news item on the NGB verified operators tool.

What it does not tell you is whether a particular offshore casino is acceptable to play at. The register lists South African licensed operators. If a site is not on it, the NGB's message is to stay away. Our site takes a slightly different, more descriptive line: no South African operator holds a licence for remote casino games under the National Gambling Act, and offshore sites that accept South African players are doing so without a local licence. We explain the legal position on our South Africa gambling law page.

That means a missing name is information and a present name is also information, but neither answers every question. If a brand you are looking at is on the register, you can see what it is licensed to do and in which province. If it is not, you are dealing with an operator the NGB says to avoid, and any licence it advertises comes from somewhere else.

How to check a casino licence in South Africa: a practical routine

Here is the routine we would follow before putting money into any online casino, based on the reporting above. None of it needs special tools.

1. Find the licence number and the exact company name. A footer that shows only a logo and no number is a warning sign. Write down the company that holds the licence, because it is often different from the brand name.
2. Search the NGB verified operators list. Use the NGB register to see whether the brand or company appears. If it does not, treat the site as unlicensed in South Africa, whatever badge it shows.
3. Look the licence up on the issuing regulator's own website. Do not click through from the casino's badge. Type the regulator's address yourself or find it through a search engine, and check that the number, company name and status match.
4. Ask who the regulator actually is. Check whether the body is a government agency in a recognised jurisdiction, and whether it publishes a complaints procedure. Reporting like the Guardian's suggests some bodies may not hold the authority they claim, so search for recent news about the regulator itself.
5. Read the terms on withdrawals and verification before you deposit. Our FICA casino verification guide explains what identity checks to expect and why a casino that skips them entirely should worry you.
6. Use payment methods that leave a record. Our payment methods pages explain how deposits and withdrawals work, and a clear trail helps if you ever need to dispute a payment.
7. Set limits first. Decide a budget you can afford to lose and stick to it. Our responsible gambling page lists the national helpline and tools that can help.

Even a clean result at every step does not make gambling safe. It only removes some avoidable risks. Gambling is entertainment with real risk, and you can lose money you cannot replace.

What regulators may do next, and what we do not know

Several things are still open. We do not know whether the Comoros government will start court action or how quickly, and the Guardian report does not say that any licence has been formally cancelled. We do not know whether the UK authorities will respond. Ghana's remarks describe its own practice and do not say how information will actually be shared between regulators, or when.

For South Africa, the interesting question is whether the verified list becomes a working tool for banks and payment providers. The NGB has said it intends to work with financial institutions, and the earlier ALGA discussion in KwaZulu-Natal raised technology such as blocking illegal websites, though ALGA's chief executive noted that enforcement agencies need a legal framework that allows it. We looked at the blocking plans in our post on the NGB plan to block illegal gambling websites.

There is also the wider pattern the Guardian describes: operators leaving one offshore base as it tightens up and moving to a cheaper one. A separate report on the Curaçao regulator data leak is summarised in our news item on the Curaçao casino secrets leak. If the pressure on Anjouan grows, we would expect the same shopping behaviour to continue elsewhere, though that is our expectation and not something any source has said.

What to watch over the coming weeks: any formal Comoros court filing, any statement from the UK government, any update to the NGB list, and any Africa-wide agreement on sharing licence histories. We will update this post if a source confirms something new.

Frequently Asked Questions