Africa suffers substantial financial losses due to cyberattacks, estimated to exceed $3.5 billion annually.
- The increasing interconnectedness and flow of people, goods, and information across the region, will intensify cyber risks.
- Developing local cybersecurity capabilities, investing in digital skills development will be critical in tackling threats.
An analysis by global management consulting firm Kearney is calling for urgent efforts for Africa to develop a comprehensive and forward-looking approach to tackle cybersecurity threats. The June 20th report: Cybersecurity in Africa: A Call to Action, emphasizes the growing scope of cyberthreats and the need to ensure Africa’s unhindered entry into the digital economy.
According to Rob van Dale, a Partner at global management consultancy Kearney, “Africa needs a comprehensive agenda to address its low cyber resilience, deal with the scale of cyber threats, and ensure Africa’s unobstructed leap into the digital economy.”
A four-point agenda
The report proposes a four-point agenda that calls for coordinated action to address four fundamental problems: elevate cybersecurity on the regional policy agenda, establish a sustained commitment to cybersecurity, strengthen the ecosystem, and develop the next wave of cybersecurity capacity.
Van Dale emphasizes the importance of a coordinated approach to cybersecurity, stating, “Cybersecurity programs often take a siloed approach to defending infrastructure, even though vulnerabilities extend across peer companies and vendors, and adversaries plan and execute sophisticated attacks across several targets at once.”
The African Union (AU) has taken steps to enhance collaboration on cybersecurity across the region by establishing the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection legal framework. However, the framework has been signed by 16 out of 55 member countries and ratified by only thirteen, indicating the need for a tighter coordination mechanism.
The article emphasizes how cyberthreats are increasingly interested in targeting Africa. According to Prashaen Reddy, a partner at Kearney, mobile penetration is expected to surpass 90 per cent this year, which would result in a major increase in internet access in Africa.
While some African nations have created national cybersecurity strategies and implementation roadmaps, the area as a whole continues to move at a moderate pace and with little urgency.
In order to create alignment within the AU, Van Dale underlines the necessity to prioritize cybersecurity in regional and national policy agendas by putting it at the top of the list of topics for discussion in regional economic dialogues.
Further Africa
