By 
By Dr Jannie Zaaiman – Secretary General of Technology Information Confederation Africa (TICON Africa)
Cybersecurity in Africa can’t be separated from business, governance, public trust or digital inclusion, especially as cyber risks rise alongside expanding digital services. The real question is not whether people are aware of the threats, but whether the institutions they rely on are ready to prevent, detect and respond in ways that enable safe and inclusive participation in the digital economy.
RELATED: AI is giving cybersecurity a competitive edge – New report
Recent evidence shows why cybersecurity matters. INTERPOL reported in 2025 that cybercrime now accounts for more than 30% of reported crime in Western and Eastern Africa, with online scams, ransomware, business email compromise and digital sextortion among the most reported threats. This data built on prior INTERPOL analysis that found that ransomware, business email compromise, and online scams are among the fastest-growing cyber threats across Africa.
This clear warning comes as Africa continues to ramp up digital infrastructure. Governments across Africa are providing services online, financial institutions are deepening digital platforms, the use of mobile money is increasing, and trade is becoming more cloud connected.
While these shifts create enormous opportunities, they also create new points of vulnerability. Kaspersky detected increases in attacks ranging from malware to spyware across Africa in 2024. We have no reason to believe that the pace of attack has since slowed. The growing importance of digital services makes them increasingly attractive to criminal networks.
Beyond awareness
While public education remains important, we need to do more than teach people how to recognise phishing attempts, suspicious links, fake payment requests and social engineering.
Awareness does not stop a coordinated attack – it merely starts the process of protecting assets. Without capacity, such as secure backups, monitoring systems, access controls, tested incident response plans or trained personnel, entities have no protection.
This is where the gap lies, in the space between awareness and operational readiness. Institutional capability across the board requires effective laws, functioning incident response structures, skilled investigators, strong regulatory coordination and organisations that know how to recover when systems come under pressure.
Strong cybercrime laws are necessary, but they need to be accompanied by enforcement such as well-equipped national incident response teams. Law enforcement needs funding, authority and real technical depth, alongside better coordination with regulators, prosecutors, banks, telecoms and service providers. Companies require tested incident playbooks, secure systems, proper monitoring and reliable backups.
Workforce development must also become a priority. As Africa faces a 3.5 million cybersecurity skills shortage, many organisations still struggle to recruit and retain skilled cybersecurity professionals. They don’t have sufficient capacity to run patches and vulnerability assessments as well as investigate incidents and ensure compliance with a company’s protocols or that of a regulator.
Executives, auditors, procurement teams and public officials all shape cyber risk through the decisions they make and must treat cybersecurity as more than a technical function because it is vital to business continuity.
Procurement is also important because risks are often created through weak vendor controls, poor configuration standards, limited logging requirements or missing backup provisions. Security needs to be built into procurement from the start.
Additionally, criminals exploit cross border weaknesses such as fragmented legal systems and slow investigative processes. This makes it essential for African countries to cooperate strongly through sharing intelligence, cross-border investigations, mutual legal assistance and coordinated incident response to limit attacks.
The growth inhibitor
Weak cybersecurity has immediate and visible consequences as a ransomware attack can disrupt hospitals, municipal systems or business operations. Digital fraud can drain customer accounts and weaken confidence in online payments, while a data breach can expose personal information and damage institutional credibility for years.
However, the cost extends beyond the immediate financial consequences through to an erosion of confidence and resultant brand damage. The impact also extends to weakening trust in the digital ecosystem, hampering access to platforms that provide financial inclusion, service delivery and market access. When trust weakens, adoption slows, and when adoption slows, so does growth.
Africa does not need fewer awareness campaigns but rather place awareness inside a wider capability agenda.
Everyone needs to play a role in digital resilience, from citizens practicing good digital hygiene; institutions building strong monitoring, response and recovery capacity; governments enforcing the rules and coordinating action; businesses strengthening governance and secure procurement through to regional bodies aligning standards and working together more quickly.
Cybercrime is rising, attacks are getting smarter and trust is taking the hit. Africa’s digital push now hinges on whether it can defend what it’s building. That means funding investigations, building real technical capacity and making institutions work together. Awareness is easy; it’s capability that counts.
