In 2018, the World Health Organisation included Gaming Disorder as a new diagnostic category in the upcoming International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11; WHO, 2018). This decision was controversial among video game effects researchers (Van Rooij et al., 2018), as it was argued that methodologies and scientific standards in this area were of insufficient quality to determine a consensus about the nature of such a disorder. Further, most data collected on gaming and its health effects have been focused on North American, European, and Asian populations. Given that Africa has approximately half a billion mobile phone subscribers (Pendergrass et al., 2019) and a growing adolescent population of which an estimated 14% have mental health problems (Cortina et al., 2012), it is urgent that high-quality research is conducted that addresses the potential associations between video game use and mental health in this population. Etindele Sosso and colleagues (2020; hereafter referred to as the published paper) report the results of a large-scale study surveying players from nine African countries, a first as far as we are aware. We were surprised to read that almost one in three participants met the diagnostic criteria for gaming disorder, a rate ten times higher than meta-analytic estimates (Ferguson, Coulson and Barnett, 2011), and that 86.9% of observed variability in reported insomnia was accounted for by gaming behaviour. However, we are concerned that numerous issues in this article warrant further scrutiny, related to: (1) data provenance, (2) data inconsistencies, (3) data similarities, and (4) statistical errors. Together, these issues call into question the accuracy of the findings, and their implications for our understanding of gaming effects.