INTERPOL Says AI Is Driving Most Cybercrime in Africa

INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 says artificial intelligence is now linked to 55% of reported cybercrime across Africa, helping criminals scale scams, credential harvesting, and automated social engineering while making attacks harder to detect. The report says cybercrime losses on the continent rose from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million, with major threats including business email compromise, romance scams, deepfake-enabled sextortion, synthetic identity fraud, ransomware, and pervasive mobile money fraud; nearly all surveyed countries reported mobile-money-related abuse, and 72% said scam centers were operating within their borders.

INTERPOL described the threat landscape as an industrialized, cross-border ecosystem tied in some cases to human trafficking and transnational organized crime, with regional patterns ranging from mobile money fraud and ransomware in East Africa to prolific BEC and romance scams in Central and West Africa. The agency said weak real-time information sharing among banks, telecoms, and law enforcement is being exploited by criminals, but noted some defensive gains: 17 countries updated cybercrime laws, Tanzania reported a 19% drop in fraud attempts after stricter SIM registration enforcement, Senegal launched an online reporting platform for digital violations affecting children, and four major cybercrime operations in 2025 led to more than 1,500 arrests and over $100 million recovered.