INTERPOL announced on Monday that it has released a new report entitled “African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026” which revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) now drives over 55 per cent of cybercrime across Africa, with financial losses doubling to $484 million since 2024.
In commenting on the significance of the report, the Director of Cybercrime at INTERPOL, Neal Jetton stated:
“Cybercrime has emerged as one of the most significant criminal threats to the region. AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion. However, we see that when countries work together, cybercriminal infrastructure can be identified, disrupted and dismantled.”
INTERPOL’s findings suggest that 55% of reported cybercrimes in Africa now rely on AI such as automated phishing, ransomware, social engineering, and identity fraud. Additionally, losses which rose from $192 million to $484 million in 2025 were largely due to AI-driven scams and credential harvesting.
The report pinpoints that East Africa operates as a major hub for mobile money fraud and ransomware targeting infrastructure. Meanwhile, Central and West Africa engage in Business Email Compromise (BEC) and romance scams, while Southern Africa’s high connectivity makes it a magnet for global threat actors.
The report documented over 600,000 sextortion cases, noting that actors frequently deployed AI-generated synthetic media. It further warns that AI-driven cybercrime is not only more sophisticated but also more scalable, allowing perpetrators to target multiple countries simultaneously.
This report comes at a pivotal time for enforcement efforts in South Africa after a series of high-profile and complex cybercrime incidents invoked havoc throughout the country, such as the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) deepfake impersonation where cyber criminals had utilized advanced voice and video cloning to impersonate SARB Governor, Lesetja Kganyago into forcing citizens to transfer their money into fake investment platforms. Throughout Tanzania and Kenya, cyber criminals have abused AI tools to create entirely synthetic identities by combining stolen personal data with deepfaked biometric faces, which were so realistic that verification protocols used by banks were not able to detect the difference.
Critics have voiced concerns that the rapidly changing nature of AI technology outpaces existing foundational documents such as the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (the Malabo Convention). Since this instrument relies on early 2010s legal definitions, a critical gap exists when addressing modern 2026-era digital threats such as AI-driven social engineering, which lack explicit coverage under the original texts.
Additionally, the provisions of treaties such as the UN Convention against Cybercrime (Hanoi Convention), to which African countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Mali and Zimbabwe are parties to, fail to provide targeted mechanisms to address digital crimes, leaving enforcement agencies without a proper framework to effectively mitigate these crimes.
This has left significant law enforcement gaps with 92 per cent of agencies lacking technical know-how in AI, leaving enforcement fragmented and reactive while only 8 per cent of intelligence analysts possessed advanced AI expertise.
Click Here For The Original Source.
