Artificial intelligence is now implicated in 55 percent of reported cybercrimes across Africa, according to a new report from INTERPOL that describes the continent’s digital threat landscape as having shifted from scattered criminal incidents into an “industrialized, borderless ecosystem.”
The African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, based on survey data from 36 African member countries, found that AI is making attacks faster, more scalable, and increasingly difficult for victims and platforms to detect.
The findings come as Africa records more than 1.1 billion mobile subscribers as of 2025, even as cybercrime legislation across the continent remains fragmented and AI readiness within law enforcement stays alarmingly low.
The financial damage has grown sharply. Cybercrime-related losses more than doubled since 2024, rising from USD 192 million to USD 484 million, driven largely by AI-facilitated scams, credential harvesting, and automated social engineering.
Online scams remained the most reported type of cybercrime in 2025, with criminals exploiting mobile money platforms, social media and AI to reach victims, and 72 percent of surveyed countries reported the presence of scam centers, concentrated mostly in Southern and West Africa.
🚨 INTERPOL report finds AI linked to more than half of cybercrime in Africa
Cyberattacks are becoming faster, more scalable, and increasingly difficult for victims and platforms to detect, according to INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026.
The report points to… pic.twitter.com/0fhwhthU5V
— INTERPOL (@INTERPOL_HQ) August 3, 2026
Regional patterns varied: East Africa became a hub for mobile money fraud and infrastructure-targeted ransomware, while business email compromise and romance scams were prolific in Central and West Africa, and Southern Africa’s high connectivity made it a target for global threat actors.
The report also flags a disturbing rise in AI-generated deepfakes fueling digital sextortion and online harassment, with roughly 600,000 sextortion detections recorded by partner TrendAI.
Criminals are also combining real personal data with fabricated elements to create synthetic identities capable of bypassing advanced biometric verification systems, which have been used to open bank accounts, secure mobile loans, and register SIM cards under false names.
Neal Jetton, Director of INTERPOL’s Cybercrime unit, said cybercrime has become one of the most significant criminal threats to the region, with AI automating every stage of an attack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion. He added that international cooperation can still disrupt criminal networks when countries work together.
There are signs of progress: 17 countries enacted or amended cybercrime legislation in 2025, and coordinated INTERPOL operations collectively led to more than 1,500 arrests and the recovery of over USD 100 million.
The report calls for standardized digital forensics, stronger cross-border cooperation, and greater investment in AI literacy among law enforcement.
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