Africa’s cybercrime problem just got an AI upgrade, Interpol warns 🤖🚨

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Artificial intelligence is no longer a side tool for cybercriminals in Africa. It’s becoming the operating system. That’s the core finding of Interpol’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, which surveyed police agencies in 36 countries and found AI now touches more than half of reported cybercrime on the continent — automating attacks, generating fake content, and helping criminals slip past security systems built to catch them.

AI at the center of the threat 📊

According to Interpol’s survey, AI played a role in 55% of cybercrime cases recorded across Africa in 2025. Of those, 47% involved occasional use of the technology, while 8% saw AI used frequently.

That split matters. Interpol describes a shift from AI as a supporting tool to AI as operational backbone: what used to speed up one step of an attack now runs several of them end to end, from picking targets to dodging detection.

Generative AI tools have also gotten cheaper and easier to use, which means the technical bar for launching a sophisticated attack has dropped. Someone with limited coding skills can now automate stages of a cyberattack that, a few years ago, required real expertise.

Deepfakes are everywhere 🎭

The most visible sign of AI’s growing role is the deepfake. Interpol’s report found that incidents involving this kind of manipulated content grew sevenfold in Africa between the second and fourth quarters of 2024.

In Uganda, a manipulated video of a public figure was reportedly used to promote a fraudulent investment scheme — the scam is said to have cost victims more than $2 million before authorities stepped in. Fake investment platforms including CryptoBridge Exchange, Optcoin, and AfriQuantumX went further, using AI-generated videos of executives and influencers to lure people into bogus automated trading schemes.

Ransomware is getting smarter 💻

Interpol also flagged a new generation of AI-enhanced ransomware. Some strains, such as PromptLock, are reportedly capable of rewriting their own malicious code depending on the system they land on.

Others can auto-generate personalized ransom notes using generative AI. These cases are still limited in number, but the report treats them as an early signal of where ransomware is headed.

AI is reshaping sextortion 📱

AI is also changing the shape of sextortion across the continent. Image-generation tools can now produce highly realistic explicit content from a single photo, which makes the usual ways of spotting fakes far less reliable.

In Ghana, financial losses among victims aged 18 to 24 increased fivefold. The report attributes much of that spike to tools that generate fake compromising images from photos already posted on social media.

Criminals are also using AI to get around Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. Interpol points to a rise in synthetic identities — profiles that blend real personal data with fabricated details — used to open bank accounts, sign up for financial services, or register SIM cards. Cases have reportedly surfaced in Cameroon, Mali, and Tanzania.

Police capacity hasn’t caught up 🚨

Law enforcement’s ability to respond varies sharply by country. Interpol found that only 33% of surveyed agencies use AI for threat detection, and just 31% use it in digital forensics.

Most agencies are still leaning on largely manual processes. The gap is even starker on the human side: only 8% of intelligence analysts across the continent have advanced AI expertise, and 92% of agencies cite a lack of technical skills as the main barrier to adopting AI-based tools.

The report also notes that many investigators haven’t been trained to spot AI-generated content at all — fake videos, cloned voices, or highly personalized phishing emails. This is happening against a backdrop of cybercrime that’s growing fast across the board.

Interpol reports that losses linked to cybercrime on the continent rose from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million in 2025. Over the same period, the number of identified victims climbed from 35,000 to 87,000. In total, the direct economic damage from cybercrime is estimated at at least $5 billion for 2025.

Interpol calls for a skills push 👨‍💻

Interpol is urging African countries to invest in training investigators to detect AI-generated content, and to deepen cooperation between states. Criminal networks are already using AI at scale, the organization argues — and closing that gap will take more than better software.

So, what do you think — are African countries equipped to handle cybercriminals armed with AI? What should be the priority?