Togo’s new cybersecurity center will serve the whole of Africa

By Faustine Ngila

A new cybersecurity center in Togo is poised to add into efforts by individual African countries to secure the continent’s cyberspace.

In November 2021, Kaspersky reported that Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya recorded a combined total of 81 million cyber attacks in three months, signaling how cybercrime is rising in tandem with internet penetration. In the second quarter of this year, phishing scams rose by 438 percent and 174 percent in Kenya and Nigeria respectively, from the previous quarter.

Based in the capital city Lomé, and set up as a partnership between the government and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Centre for Coordination and Research in Cybersecurity will monitor, detect, and share cybersecurity intelligence with African governments, policy makers, law enforcement, and security agencies. Cybercrime is estimated to cost Africa US$4 billion a year.

Cybersecurity in Africa

The center will also lead internet security research in the continent, in a time when hacking groups are deploying sophisticated deep learning software to penetrate African government websites, banks, hospitals, power companies, and telcos. In July, Liquid Cyber Security, the internet security arm of cloud firm Liquid Intelligence Technologies, launched a cybersecurity fusion center in South Africa.