Youth unemployment another cyber security challenge for Africa

Africa’s sizeable youth population is a competitive advantage in the continent’s efforts to cement its position in the global digital economy, but unless there is political will to address unemployment in this market segment, youngsters could be lured into the dark world of cyber crime.

This is just one issue that concerns Africa’s policymakers, government representatives and technology experts, highlighting the importance of institutions like the Africa Cyber Defense Forum (ACDF) in addressing cyber security challenges.

The ACDF is a think-tank – a forum for collaboration between stakeholders that represent the continent’s growing cyber security ecosystem.

Its role is that of an advisory organisation, a hub to provide expertise, guidance with international best practices, cyber drills/simulation and a cyber security partner with the resources to test the level of resilience or cyber maturity of organisations and businesses.

As founder and CEO of the ACDF, Gilbert Nyandeje has a vantage point to help monitor cyber security trends, incidents and activities that impact Africa.

Speaking to ITWeb ahead of his scheduled presentation at the 20th annual ITWeb Security Summit 2025, taking place in Johannesburg on 3 and 4 June at the Sandton Convention Centre, Nyandeje said Africa’s threat landscape is growing, and it’s no longer a matter of ‘if’ an organisation is attacked, but rather ‘when’.

“We’ve witnessed an increase in ransomware, in business e-mail compromise and social engineering attacks,” said Nyandeje, who added that insider threats (those orchestrated from within an organisation) have also risen, and threat actors continue to target Africa’s burgeoning mobile money market.

He said APTs or advanced persistent threat groups remain a challenge, particularly because they are attractive to disillusioned youngsters, and this supports groups like the ‘yahoo boys’ (the name given to an organised cyber crime syndicate that operates out of Nigeria and which has launched cyber scams using Yahoo e-mail accounts) having operations out of countries like Nigeria.

Nyandeje will use his presentation at the ITWeb Security Summit 2025 to raise a call to action among organisations operating in Africa, to focus on their cyber security maturity level.

“Companies in Africa are at different levels of cyber security maturity. However, it is important that business leaders are aware of basic cyber security ‘hygiene’. We know that issues like data protection, privacy and governance, risk and compliance dominate at boardroom level, especially in the financial services market – and this has to be taken into consideration,” Nyandeje added.

The ACDF boss said cyber security comes down to three components – people, processes and technology.

“However, if a business doesn’t have its processes and people aligned, then the technology doesn’t matter much,” Nyandeje continued.

He stressed the importance of incident response plans and regular testing of backup and recovery strategies.

“Incident response is well documented and understood, but without effective backup, there is not much that can be done,” said Nyandeje.

The ACDF has underlined the role of resources like the Mitre ATT&CK (Adversary Tactic, Techniques and Common Knowledge) framework, a global cyber security knowledge base that helps facilitate engagement and collaboration between all stakeholders within the cyber security ecosystem and ensures resilience by equipping organisations with a structured, actionable approach to counter threats.

This framework details the different phases of an attack, the various layers used by threat actors, and classifies the type of attack, which assists organisations to better protect themselves.

Nyandeje said that in his presentation, he would cover the relevance of initiatives like the Malabo Convention, and urge delegates to continue to invest in cyber security solutions and R&D.

Click here for more information and to register for the ITWeb Security Summit 2025.