{
  "id": 16772470,
  "title": "Cyber resilience is the foundation for Africa’s next phase of digital growth, Mastercard whitepaper finds",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/27/cyber-resilience-is-the-foundation-for-africas-next-phase-of-digital",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-10-27T17:40:41.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Nairametrics",
    "slug": "nairametrics",
    "url": "https://nairametrics.com/2026/10/27/cyber-resilience-is-the-foundation-for-africas-next-phase-of-digital-growth-mastercard-whitepaper-finds/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Africa's digital economy is experiencing rapid growth, creating opportunities for individuals, businesses, and governments across the continent. However, ensuring strong cyber resilience is crucial to maintain this momentum, as reported in a new Mastercard-commissioned whitepaper titled \"Africa's Digital Defense Race.\" During the period from 2016 to 2025, mobile money users increased fivefold, digital banking users rose four and a half times, and the e-commerce market expanded four and a third times.\n\nWhile Africa's digital payments economy is projected to reach USD 1.5 trillion by 2030, the report highlights that cyber threat activity has grown at a similar rate during the same period. This growing risk underscores the need to enhance governance, skills, infrastructure, and collaboration to safeguard the continent's digital economy.\n\nShabir Ahmed, Senior Vice President and Customer Solutions Center Lead for Africa, emphasized that Africa's digital growth is presenting genuine opportunities, but protecting this growth has become a top priority. To address this, Mastercard has established the Africa Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a platform that fosters collaboration between the public and private sectors to share intelligence, knowledge, and best practices.\n\nIn 2025, Mastercard observed 69,236 cyber events targeting African organizations, averaging one incident every eight minutes. Over the span of 2006 to 2025, cyberattacks across the continent surged by more than 421%, compared to a 307% increase globally. The whitepaper reveals that cyber resilience priorities differ across Africa's diverse digital ecosystem. Nigeria, with one of Africa's largest fintech ecosystems, experienced a substantial portion of the observed cyberattacks. South Africa's concentrated financial sector was targeted by 12.6% of the continent's observed attacks. Morocco, a burgeoning regional technology hub, has established a well-organized cyber governance structure. In Kenya, the report emphasizes the importance of bolstering resilience around systems that support financial inclusion and digital growth.\n\nThree sectors – technology, public sector, and financial services – accounted for 44% of the observed activity, reflecting the high-value data and services these industries hold as drivers of Africa's digital growth. Personal information, financial information, and customer-facing services made up 27% of the targeted assets, underscoring that resilience ultimately concerns safeguarding the individuals and businesses who rely on these services daily.\n\nThe whitepaper identifies talent as the most significant investment opportunity. Africa currently lacks roughly 200,000 cybersecurity roles, representing 23% of its current cybersecurity workforce. The Africa Cybersecurity Center of Excellence addresses this gap by facilitating knowledge sharing and best practices among security leaders and teams, as well as helping organizations build readiness through scenario-based exercises. Collective action has already yielded results, with Interpol's Operation Serengeti 2.0 leading to 1,209 arrests across 18 African countries and the recovery of USD 97.4 million in 2025.\n\nMastercard approaches resilience through collaboration, partnering with governments, financial institutions, and businesses of all sizes. The Center of Excellence serves as a platform for coordinated responses, enabling the sharing of threat intelligence, monitoring risk, and strengthening collective defense across the continent. The full whitepaper, \"Africa's Digital Defense Race,\" is available for download on the Center's website.",
  "summary": "Digital transformation is unlocking new growth and opportunity across Africa Building the continents cybersecurity workforce, with more than 200,000 roles unfilled at the end of 2025, is emerging as one of it’s clearest opportunities to strengthen resilience Africa’s digital economy is growing at remarkable speed, opening new opportunities for people, businesses and governments across the […] The…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "TechCentral",
        "title": "The unregulated online market betting on South Africa’s next mayors",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/27/the-unregulated-online-market-betting-on-south-africas-next-mayors",
        "published": "2026-10-27T07:19:10.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}