Africa battling cybercrime

Abidjan – Cyber experts are urging Africa to up its game in the face of criminals targeting the continent’s fast-growing internet economy with scams and theft.

Sub-Saharan countries are some of the world’s fastest-growing online markets – which makes them both attractive and vulnerable to cybercrime, say specialists.

“The issue of cybersecurity has to be raised to the core duties of the state,” Chadian economist Succes Masra said at a cyber conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s economic hub, which ended on Tuesday.

“If you do that, you will get follow-through. There’s incomplete awareness about this problem, and we have to speed things up.”

According to Interpol, half a billion people in Africa are connected to the internet – a figure that in raw numbers places the continent ahead of other regions such as South America or the Middle East.

But there’s plenty of room for growth, as more than 60% of Africa’s population is still offline.

Major attacks on the internet itself are very rare in Africa, the most spectacular being a brief takedown of the web across Liberia in 2016. Instead, say experts, fraud and theft are flourishing, inflicting an estimated economic cost of $4 billion (about R64.5 billion) a year.

Many in Africa use cellphones to make instant money transfers, often through shops, in order to avoid the expense and time of using a bank. However, several countries have already implemented a strategic plan for cybersecurity, setting up units with special investigators and launching awareness campaigns.