Cybercrime in Africa: Phishing, sextortion and ransomware on the rise

Cybercrime has emerged as one of Africa's new invisible forces. Waves of phishing, chilling sextortion campaigns, and an invasion of ransomware are disrupting states, humiliating businesses, and isolating victims. Behind this tide lies a legal vacuum and culpable slowness.

The digital criminal machine is running wild

Interpol confirms it: cybercrime is skyrocketing on the continent. In countries like Zambia, alerts have increased by several thousand percent in one year. Phishing, a classic but still formidable digital trap, remains the main entry point. It mimics banking, impersonates tax or insurance companies, slips into email inboxes, and then siphons everything off. And when phishing fails, ransomware enters the scene. In Egypt and South Africa, thousands of cases have been recorded in just a few months. The software takes data hostage, paralyzes systems, and demands payment in cryptocurrency to release its hold. Nothing is spared: not government departments, public companies, or data platforms.

The intimate sphere becomes a field of extortion

In a hyperconnected Africa, privacy is becoming as vulnerable as bank accounts. Sextortion is exploding. Cybercriminals are infiltrating social media, seducing, recording, and threatening to publish. Lives are being destroyed for a few stolen images, families ruined to avoid scandal. Business email compromise fraud is proliferating at the same time. From Lagos to Abidjan, companies are falling into the trap, sometimes losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a simple fraudulent transfer.

Responses too slow for a galloping threat

Faced with these attacks, African states are helpless. Most lack the appropriate laws, the technical resources, and the necessary training. Cyber ​​teams are underfunded, reports are underutilized, and prosecutions are slow and ineffective. Yet, efforts are emerging. Operations coordinated by Interpol have led to arrests, networks have been dismantled, and awareness campaigns have been launched. Partnerships with the private sector have helped uncover sophisticated malware and map attacks. But all of this remains insufficient.

Cybercrime moves fast, it strikes hard, it humiliates. It makes technology suspect, it undermines digital trust, it weakens entire states. And while we're still debating how to respond, it continues to thrive.