Africa's Economies Feel Pain of Cybersecurity Deficit

While most of us now understand the effect that cybersecurity and cybercrime can have at the business level, it’s important to remember the cumulative effect of so much cybercrime can have tangible effects at the national and international levels as well, even when the crime in question is not involved in international politics. This effect is most visible in Africa and its economic development. According to a report issued by Access Partnership and the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, Africa’s collective GDP has grown significantly in the last two decades, with much of that growth coming from the digital sector. With the GDP of the continent expected to rise to over 4 trillion USD by 2027, cybercrime has been growing at a similar pace, and directly affecting the economic prospects of the various countries. Ransomware and business email compromise(BEC) have been the dominant threats, and the lack of cybersecurity training in many developing countries has made them highly effective. In South Africa, economic losses from cybercrime are valued at approximately 2.2 billion Rand(123 million USD) per year, and overall losses of the entire continent are estimated to approach 10 billion USD per year.

Leading experts consider It necessary for the nations of Africa to adopt stricter cybersecurity standards and encourage more robust cyber education programs as part of the process of bringing more of theAfrican population online. South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt, the three largest economies in the region, have yet to sign the Malabo Convention, the set of cybercrime protocols established by the African Union. Many individual nations have set up their own cybersecurity strategies and frameworks, but some of them, such as the one in South Africa, are nearly a decade out of date. New policy changes are required to meet the shifting cyber environment, especially where the use of AI-based technologies is concerned. Africa has been a leading source of cybercrime, but we can be hopeful that with the right policies in place, given its trend of new young, tech-savvy workers, it can also become a leading source of cybersecurity defenders.