Cyberattacks on African firms rise faster than global average

Cyberattacks on African organisations grew faster than the global average over the past decade. Hackers are increasingly targeting the continent’s fast-growing mobile money and digital banking platforms.

A Mastercard-commissioned whitepaper released Monday shows attacks across Africa rose by more than 421 percent between 2016 and 2025, compared with 307 percent globally.

Mastercard’s cyber intelligence unit recorded 69,236 cyber events targeting African organisations last year. That works out to about one attack every eight minutes.

The rise in attacks has mirrored the growth of the digital economy. Over the same period, mobile money users grew 5.9 times, digital banking users 4.7 times and the e-commerce market 5.3 times.

Africa’s digital payments economy is on track to reach $1.5 trillion (about Sh193.5 trillion) by 2030, the report says.

“As threats become more sophisticated and coordinated, our response has to be just as coordinated,” said Shabir Ahmed, Mastercard’s senior vice-president and customer solutions centre lead for Africa.

Technology firms, the public sector and financial services together accounted for 44 percent of observed attacks. These sectors hold valuable data and run critical services.

Personal information, financial data and customer-facing services made up 27 percent of the assets targeted.

Nigeria, home to one of Africa’s largest fintech markets, accounted for a significant share of attacks this year. South Africa’s financial sector was the target of 12.6 percent of the continent’s attacks.

In Kenya, the report flags the need to protect the systems that support financial inclusion, such as mobile money and digital lending platforms.

Skills gap

The report identifies the shortage of cybersecurity skills as the biggest weakness, and also the biggest opportunity for investment.

Africa has about 200,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs, a shortage equal to 23 percent of its current cybersecurity workforce.

Mastercard has set up an Africa Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, which brings together public and private sector players to share threat intelligence and run readiness drills.

“That is why we launched the Africa Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, bringing the public and private sectors together to share intelligence, knowledge and best practices,” said Mr Ahmed.

The report points to joint enforcement as evidence that collaboration works. Interpol’s Operation Serengeti 2.0, which ran between June and August last year, led to 1,209 arrests across 18 African countries. It also recovered $97.4 million (about Sh12.6 billion).

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