As Africa experiences fast economic growth, cybercrime appears to be keeping pace.
In 2023, for example, the average number of weekly cyberattacks impacting African businesses grew 23% compared to the prior years, the fastest increase worldwide, according to Interpol’s 2024 African Cyberthreat Assessment, with ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) topping the list of serious threats. Digital illiteracy, aging infrastructure, and a lack of security professionals all present challenges to preventing economic loss due to cybercrime, according to a report published last month by Access Partnership and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria.
As the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP) grows to an estimated $4 trillion by 2027, cyberattacks and cybercrime constitute a significant drag on economic development, and African nations need to accelerate their training of cybersecurity skills, says Nicole Isaac, vice president of global public policy for technology giant Cisco.
“Africa faces the most significant impact from cyber threats compared to any other continent,” she says, adding “nearly [all] financial leaders in Africa consider cybercrime a significant threat along with macroeconomic conditions and political and social instability.”
Currently, Africa accounts for eleven of the world’s top-20 fastest growing economies, with Niger, Senegal, and Libya leading the region’s strong economies with growth rates of at least 7.9%, according to the African Development Bank Group. South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt are the three largest economies in the region, but none have signed the Malabo Convention, the cybercrime protocols put forward by the African Union.
South Africa, for one, has seen cybercrime cost the economy around 2.2 billion Rand per year (US $123 million), much of it made possible by the general lack of cyber-safety knowledge, says Heinrich Bohlmann, associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
Cybercrime is often the result of users at home and at work being unaware of cyber risks and scams, he says. “They too easily click or reply to things they shouldn’t, and in the workplace, this can, of course, have massive repercussions for businesses.”
