INTERPOL: Over half of Africa’s cybercrimes are AI-enabled

According to the newly released INTERPOL African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, 55 percent of cybercrimes reported across the continent now involve Artificial Intelligence (AI), underscoring a major shift in the cyber threat landscape.

The report says cybercrime has evolved into an increasingly automated underground economy, where criminal networks are using AI and other advanced technologies to launch attacks faster, at greater scale, and across multiple countries simultaneously.

The report found East Africa emerged as a hub of mobile money fraud and infrastructure-targeted ransomware, while business email compromise and romance scams targeting corporate and individual victims were prolific in Central and West Africa.

Southern Africa's high connectivity makes it a magnet for global threat actors seeking maximum disruption.

The report further shows that cybercrime-related financial losses across Africa have more than doubled since 2024, reaching an estimated $484 million.

The assessment, based on survey data from 36 member countries and intelligence from private sector partners including Fortinet, Mastercard, the Shadowserver Foundation, S2W and TrendAI, found that 72 percent of surveyed countries reported the presence of organized scam centres, with the highest concentration in Southern and West Africa.

Among the most alarming developments highlighted in the report is the growing use of AI-generated synthetic identities to bypass biometric security systems.

Criminals are combining stolen personal information with fabricated data to deceive identity verification processes, enabling them to open bank accounts, obtain mobile loans and register SIM cards under false identities.

Neal Jetton, Director of INTERPOL's Cybercrime unit, said AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack. "AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion," he said, adding that coordinated action between countries has allowed cybercriminal infrastructure to be identified, disrupted and dismantled. 

Online scams remain the most frequently reported form of cybercrime across the continent, while the financial services, telecommunications and government sectors continue to bear the brunt of AI-enabled credential theft and automated social engineering attacks.

The findings mirror Kenya’s own evolving cyber threat landscape.

In June, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) announced that it detected 3.37 billion cyber threat events between January and March 2026. Although this represented a 26.15 percent decline from the previous quarter, the authority cautioned that attacks had become increasingly sophisticated, with system attacks targeting critical information infrastructure accounting for 3.23 billion of the incidents.

The INTERPOL report also noted that Kenya ranked among SOCRadar’s top phishing detections globally in September 2025.