Science & Technology

Interpol launches cybercrime desk across Africa

Cybercrime damages set to cost the global economy $10.5 trillion annually by 2025

Interpol launches cybercrime desk across Africa. Source: interpol.int

Interpol has announced the launch of a new cybercrime operations desk to boost the capacity of 49 African countries to fight cybercrime.

The Africa desk will help shape a regional strategy to drive intelligence-led coordinated actions against cybercriminals and support joint operations.

We are working with like-minded partners, to make sure that the international order that governs cyber activity is fit for purpose. Our aim should be to create a cyberspace that is free, open, peaceful and secure, which benefits all countries and all people. We want to see international law respected in cyberspace, just like anywhere else. And we need to show how the rules apply to these changes in technology, the changes in threats, and the systemic attempts to render the internet a lawless space
Dominic Raab, UK Foreign Secretary 

A 2017 assessment coordinated by Interpol with partners and member countries in Africa found that each act of Internet fraud targeting businesses enabled cybercriminals to steal an average of $2.7 million from companies and $422,000 from individuals.

The project will provide opportunities to take regular pulse checks on cybercrime in Africa and to publish annual threat landscape assessments that will underpin operational activities.

With UK funding for the two-year initiative amounting to almost £3 million, the Africa cybercrime initiative will be implemented by the Cybercrime Directorate at the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore.

We’ve reported that Interpol arrested three Nigerian cybercriminals.

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