Mobile money fraud and high-tech scam networks have pushed cybercrime losses across Africa to an unprecedented high, with new data revealing financial damage has more than doubled in just two years.
The surge comes as criminal networks increasingly harness artificial intelligence to automate their operations and target millions of newly connected mobile users across the continent.
Details from Interpol’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 show that financial losses linked to cybercrime jumped from 192 million United States dollars in 2024 to 484 million United States dollars.
The sharp rise has been heavily fueled by mobile money exploitation, credential harvesting, and sophisticated social engineering schemes that sweep through digital payment platforms.
The forty-page document, compiled from survey data gathered across thirty-six African member nations, outlines a fundamental shift in how digital crimes are executed.
What was once a landscape dominated by isolated online scams has transformed into an industrialised, borderless ecosystem capable of striking targets at scale.
Regional patterns highlighted in the report show distinct operational hubs across the continent. East Africa has emerged as a primary zone for mobile money fraud alongside targeted ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. In Central and West Africa, business email compromise and romance scams remain prolific, hitting both corporate entities and individual victims.
Meanwhile, Southern Africa’s ultra-high digital connectivity has made it a prime magnet for global threat actors looking to cause maximum disruption.
Online scams remained the most frequently reported category of digital crime over the past year. Attackers are increasingly weaponising artificial intelligence, social media channels, and mobile transaction platforms to reach victims.
According to Interpol, artificial intelligence now powers fifty-five per cent of all reported cybercrimes on the continent, making malicious operations faster, highly scalable, and remarkably difficult for automated security systems or victims to spot.
The scale of the threat is further underscored by the widespread setup of physical operations dedicated to digital fraud. Seventy-two per cent of surveyed countries confirmed the presence of dedicated scam centres within their borders, with the heaviest concentrations identified in Southern and West Africa.
This rapid expansion of cyber-criminality coincides with unprecedented digital growth across the continent, which recorded more than 1.1 billion mobile subscribers. However, law enforcement capabilities have struggled to keep pace with the boom.
Interpol warned that cybercrime legislation across the region remains severely fragmented, while AI readiness among law enforcement agencies remains alarmingly low, leaving severe gaps in cross-border policing and threat containment.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
