By Abigail Mbah
Four INTERPOL-coordinated operations against cybercrime in Africa produced more than 1,500 arrests, the seizure of hundreds of devices and the recovery of over $100 million, according to the organisation’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026.
The operations—Serengeti 2.0, Contender 3.0, Sentinel and Red Card 2.0, show what cross-border work can achieve. The report, drawn from surveys of 36 African member countries, also maps clear regional patterns in the threats.
East Africa has become a hub for mobile money fraud and ransomware aimed at infrastructure. Central and West Africa see heavy volumes of business email compromise and romance scams that hit both companies and individuals. Southern Africa’s high levels of connectivity make it attractive to global threat actors looking for maximum disruption.
Online scams remained the most common reported cybercrime in 2025. Attackers leaned on mobile money services, social media and AI tools. Scam centres were reported in 72 percent of the surveyed countries, concentrated most heavily in Southern and West Africa.
AI has raised the technical bar. Deepfakes and synthetic media are used in sextortion and harassment cases. Business email compromise messages have become more convincing because of AI-generated text. Synthetic identities that combine real and fabricated data have been used to open accounts and register SIMs, sometimes slipping past biometric systems.
Progress on the legal side is visible. Seventeen countries enacted or amended cybercrime legislation in 2025. Senegal launched an online reporting platform aimed at improving responses to online violations that affect children. Regionally coordinated training programmes continue to build longer-term capacity.
INTERPOL’s recommendations call for standardised digital forensic tools, stronger cross-border cooperation, better AI literacy among officers and formal public-private partnerships to improve prevention, detection and response. Neal Jetton, director of INTERPOL’s Cybercrime unit, stressed that joint efforts can dismantle criminal infrastructure even as AI accelerates attacks.
The report is part of INTERPOL’s African Joint Operation against Cybercrime initiative, supported by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, with contributions from technical partners including Fortinet, Mastercard, the Shadowserver Foundation, S2W and TrendAI.