Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming cybercrime across East Africa, enabling criminals to launch more convincing phishing scams, create fake identities, automate attacks, and target critical infrastructure as the region’s digital economy expands, according to the INTERPOL African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026.
The International Criminal Police Organization’s report identifies East Africa as one of Africa’s fastest-growing digital regions, where the rapid adoption of mobile money, digital banking, and online public services is creating new opportunities for cybercriminals.
While digital technologies have expanded financial inclusion and access to services, INTERPOL warns that criminals are exploiting the same technologies to carry out more advanced, difficult-to-detect, and effective attacks than traditional cyber attacks.
Africa recorded more than 1.1 billion mobile subscriptions, 570 million internetusers, and digital transactions exceeding US$1.1 trillion in 2025, highlighting the scale of the continent’s digital transformation and the growing number of potential targets for cybercrime.
The report says AI is lowering the barriers to cybercrime by enabling attackers to automate phishing campaigns, generate convincing business emails that imitate executives, clone voices, create realistic deepfake images and videos, and produce synthetic identities that can bypass digital verification systems. These tools are allowing criminals to deceive victims with unprecedented speed and accuracy.
Artificial intelligence is also accelerating ransomware attacks. According to the report, cybercriminals are combining machine learning with automated reconnaissance tools that scan thousands of systems per second to identify vulnerable networks before deploying malicious software.
The growing sophistication of these attacks is being felt across East Africa, particularly in mobile financial services.
INTERPOL identifies mobile money fraud as Africa’s most widespread cyber-enabled financial crime, with 97 percent of surveyed countries describing it as a major threat.
The report says Kenya detected 123,000 fraudulent SIM cards in 2025 that enabled SIM-swap attacks used to drain victims’ mobile money accounts, while Tanzania reported fewer fraud attempts after strengthening SIM registration requirements.
The report also cites a suspected ransomware attack on Uganda’s Electricity Transmission Company in 2025, warning that cybercriminals are increasingly targeting essential infrastructure alongside financial institutions and telecommunications providers.
Beyond financial fraud, INTERPOL warns that AI is driving the rapid growth of business email compromise, in which attackers generate highly convincing emails that mimic executives’ writing styles, company terminology, and signatures to trick employees into transferring money or revealing sensitive information.
The technology is also contributing to a rise in digital sextortion. The report says criminals are using AI to generate realistic, explicit images from a single photograph, allowing them to blackmail victims with fabricated content. In 2025, TrendAI recorded about 600,000 sextortion detections across Africa, with South Africa, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia among the countries recording the highest activity.
INTERPOL estimates that reported cybercrime losses across Africa rose from US$192 million in 2024 to US$484 million in 2025, while the number of identified victims increased from 35,000 to 87,000. Overall, cybercrime is estimated to have cost the continent at least US$5 billion in direct economic losses in 2025.
The report also highlighted that cybercriminal networks are operating across borders while exploiting uneven cybersecurity capabilities, fragmented legislation, and limited information sharing among countries.
The report calls for stronger regional cooperation, improved cyber resilience, and greater investment in law enforcement capacity to counter the growing use of artificial intelligence in cybercrime.
