A brand new INTERPOL report has sounded the alarm over a dramatic enhance in cybercrime throughout Africa, with digital crime now accounting for a big proportional of all prison exercise throughout the continent.
The report, revealed this week, paints a sobering image with two-thirds of surveyed African international locations reporting that cybercrime represents a medium-to-high proportion of their whole reported crime.
In elements of Western and Japanese Africa, that proportion has skyrocketed, reaching or exceeding 30%.
Essentially the most reported cyber threats – in response to the report – are on-line scams, ransomware, enterprise e-mail compromise, and digital sextortion, with suspected rip-off notifications rising an eye-opening 3000% within the final yr in some African international locations.
Ransomware, as with the remainder of the world, is a big drawback in Africa – with South Africa and Egypt detecting the very best variety of assaults at 17,849 and 12,281 respectively, adopted by Nigeria (3,459) and Kenya (3,030).
In the meantime, 60% of African international locations report a rise in digital sextortion assaults, the place criminals use both stolen or AI-generated sexual pictures to blackmail their targets.
In opposition to this tidal wave of cybercrime, Africa seems to be a continent which is barely in a position to defend itself. The report notes that sturdy legal guidelines to combat cybercrime are solely a part of the answer – as many international locations battle to place implement them. INTERPOL’s research discovered 90% of respondents felt that their legislation enforcement or prosecution capability wanted “some or important enchancment” to counter the menace.
Regardless of the rising tide of cybercriminal exercise, most African international locations nonetheless lack important infrastructure to fight it with simply 30% of countries having incident-reporting platforms, and fewer than one in 5 (19%) having functioning cyberthreat intelligence databases.
Few nationwide establishments, says INTERPOL, are staffed or geared up to answer incidents in actual time.
You get the impression that in relation to the combat towards cybercrime, Africa is outgunned and underfunded.
As well as, many international locations lack cross-border co-ordination in relation to countering cybercriminal exercise – a necessity contemplating how cybercrime conceived in a single territory may cause hurt in one other.
Over 86% of African legislation enforcement businesses reported inadequate worldwide cooperation on cybercrime investigations, whereas practically 90% cited an absence of sturdy public-private partnerships.
There’s clearly dangerous information amongst these statistics, however there are additionally indicators of progress. For example, plenty of African nations have taken steps to modernise their laws, and arrange worldwide frameworks to fight cybercriminal exercise. Moreover, there are investments being made into equipping officers with coaching, forensic labs, and experience to counter twenty first century crime.
INTERPOL additionally highlights Operation Serengeti, a joint initiative which led to the over 1,000 arrests throughout 19 African nations of individuals suspected of involvement in ransomware, enterprise e-mail compromise, sextortion and on-line scams.
Equally Operation Crimson Card was a multinational legislation enforcement operation carried out from November 2024 to February 2025 that resulted in over 300 arrests of suspected cybercriminals throughout seven African international locations.
Clearly there was some good work executed by legislation enforcement businesses who’re in want of nice assets. Going ahead far more funding might be required. Not solely is the quantity of cybercrime that’s impacting the folks of Africa on the rise, however rising risks similar to AI-powered scams and deepfake manipulation imply that issues are prone to worsen faster than anybody can think about.
