Cybercrime: the call for a common African front against networks that ignore borders

Sending money from your phone has become an everyday act in Africa. Behind every transaction, though, there is a bet: that the money will arrive and that the system is safe enough to deserve trust. In 2025, $1.4 trillion flowed through mobile money in sub-Saharan Africa, 66% of the global value of such transactions. This success rests on an asset as precious as it is fragile: trust.

Two specialists draw a warning from this in an op-ed published by CIO Mag: Franck Kié, who runs the Cyber Africa Forum as its commissioner general, and Ouanilo Medegan Fagla, head of the CNIN, the Beninese centre in charge of digital investigations. Their finding: online fraudsters ignore borders, while police and courts remain locked inside theirs.

« No national system, however robust, can respond on its own to a threat that is cross-border by nature. »

Franck Kié and Ouanilo Medegan Fagla (our translation)

Fast scammers, slow investigations

The pace of fraudsters and the pace of justice could not be further apart. In a single morning, a gang can run its operation from one capital, swindle residents of a neighbouring country, cash out in a third and make the money disappear through a fourth. Facing them, each investigator runs into laws that do not match, digital evidence that a neighbouring court may not accept, and requests for mutual assistance that take weeks to come through. When they do, the funds have often already been converted into cryptocurrency or withdrawn in cash.

Benin, a growing field

Take Benin. For several years, Cotonou has been moving its administration online. With Smart Gouv, now in its second phase, the state wants health, schools, courts and public finances to handle their procedures online, while also strengthening its ability to respond to attacks. The population is following suit. According to the regulator’s figures for the first three months of 2026, mobile internet had 11.56 million active subscribers (10.81 million a quarter earlier), and fibre served 106,018 homes, three times more than a year before (34,082).

Every new online counter is one more door to watch. ASIN, the Beninese agency in charge of information systems, recorded a total of 878 vulnerabilities at government agencies and critical infrastructure operators from 2021 to 2024: 326 in public services and 155 in the financial sector. On top of that come 832 cases of stolen passwords. Part of this increase is due to better detection than before; the level of exposure nonetheless remains high.

Côte d’Ivoire faces loan scams

The same trend can be seen in Côte d’Ivoire, which had 38.5 million mobile internet subscriptions at the end of 2025, 11.5% more than a year earlier. During Red Card 2.0, an operation led by Interpol, Ivorian police arrested 58 people and seized 240 phones, 25 laptops and more than 300 SIM cards. The networks targeted were notably defrauding users of microcredit apps. Since July 2026, the country has been working on a 2026–2030 cybersecurity strategy built around trust in digital services.

What cooperation has already achieved

When police forces work together, results follow. In 2025, Operation Serengeti 2.0, carried out by 18 African countries together with the United Kingdom, ended with 1,209 arrests and $97.4 million seized. In early 2026, Red Card 2.0 led to 651 arrests across 16 countries on the continent. But these crackdowns remain time-limited campaigns: there is not yet a permanent mechanism to take over.

Why West Africa is particularly exposed

The region combines several risk factors. Mobile money is very widespread, with instant transfers between neighbouring countries, which makes it easy to move stolen money quickly. Shared languages, notably French and English, allow a single network to target several countries with the same messages. And the youth of the population, highly connected but often poorly trained in digital security, provides a pool of victims but also, unfortunately, of recruits for scam networks.

Fraudulent loan apps illustrate this reality. They promise quick credit, vacuum up the phone’s contacts and photos, then harass the borrower and their relatives. Operations in Côte d’Ivoire and elsewhere have shown that these networks often operate from several countries at once, with servers, accounts and call centres spread across borders. A single country cannot dismantle them. Investigators from several countries need to share information in real time, seize servers and phones at the same moment, and freeze accounts before the funds are moved elsewhere.

The proposals

• Bring national cybercrime laws closer together.
• Speed up mutual legal assistance between African countries.
• Make it easier to collect and preserve digital evidence, so that it is recognised from one country to another.
• Allow assets to be frozen quickly, before the money disappears.
• Make operational cooperation a permanent mechanism, not a series of one-off operations.

Part of the legal framework exists. The African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, known as the Malabo Convention, adopted in 2014, came into force in 2023. But as of 2 February 2026, only 20 of the African Union’s 55 member states had ratified or acceded to it. Without broader membership, cooperation continues to depend on case-by-case agreements.

The private sector also has a role to play. Mobile money operators, banks and fintechs hold valuable information for spotting accounts used by scammers and blocking funds quickly. Mechanisms for sharing alerts between companies and with the authorities, in compliance with data laws, would make it possible to react in minutes rather than days. Several countries are already experimenting with this kind of cooperation, with encouraging results in freezing diverted sums.

See you in Cotonou

The subject will dominate the next Cyber Africa Forum, the sixth, expected in Cotonou on 16 and 17 November 2026 under the theme of tomorrow’s digital trust. The organisers expect more than 1,500 participants and are setting up an exercise area for ethical hackers with ASIN. Beyond the event, the two signatories’ appeal raises a fundamental question: as African economies go digital, their security depends less and less on the strength of a single state, and more and more on the ability of several states to act together. Digital trust, without which mobile money and online public services cannot thrive, is built at this regional scale, with trained investigators, fast procedures and shared political will.