Rethink digital security in an evolving African threat landscape

As Africa’s digital economy matures and the continent becomes increasingly mobile‑first and digitally connected, growth opportunities are expanding, but so too are the opportunities for fraudsters to exploit the systems and channels businesses rely on to engage with customers.

By Brighton Chidoma, senior customer growth executive at Infobip

A more digitised economy means fraudsters now have far more touchpoints with customers and far more ways to manipulate systems. It also means the era when phishing was the primary threat is long gone.

Email was once the main entry point because it was the easiest channel for criminals to exploit. Today, attackers reach customers across SMS, messaging apps and compromised authentication flows. Social engineering has also become more prevalent as businesses are more available and exposed than ever before.

A broader attack surface

While Africa’s digital evolution is creating convenience, scale and reach, it is also broadening the attack surface, with fraudsters turning every new channel into an opportunity to impersonate, intercept or deceive.

Phishing still matters, but it’s now only one part of a much broader threat landscape. Attackers have expanded their playbook, using smishing, impersonation, account takeover, credential abuse and other techniques that target both people and systems across multiple channels.

For a financial institution, customers engage over SMS, USSD, email, WhatsApp and more. Each of these touchpoints can create an opportunity for fraud. The threat is no longer confined to email; it spans digital communication, giving criminals more opportunities to move between channels and target customers.

This trend is echoed beyond Infobip’s own data: INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 found that AI is now linked to 55% of reported cybercrime across the continent, with related financial losses more than doubling from $192-million in 2024 to $484-million in 2025.

Investing in proactive protection

While the rising number of cybercrime threats across Africa is concerning, there is also evidence of increased investment in proactive protection and more effective fraud prevention measures.

The Infobip 2026 Fraud and Security Trends Report shows a 118% increase in blocked harmful messages. While that figure highlights the scale of the threat, it also tells us something encouraging businesses with the right structures and systems in place are detecting and stopping more threats before they reach customers.

The same report shows the composition of that fraud has shifted: phishing, which made up a much larger share of Africa’s blocked traffic in 2024, fell to 15% by 2025, while gambling-related content expanded to more than 11% of blocked messages – concrete evidence that fraud pressure on the continent is spreading across multiple categories rather than concentrating on one channel.

The figure therefore reflects two parallel realities: fraud attempts are increasing, but so is the ability of businesses to identify and block them. It is encouraging that African enterprises are becoming more proactive in protecting their customers, as harmful messages are being identified, filtered and blocked at scale.

Single security controls are no longer adequate

Because attacks are now multi‑stage and multi‑channel, a single security control is not enough. Fraud moves fluidly between channels; it might begin as smishing, escalate into impersonation, and end with an authentication bypass through WhatsApp or email.

When the attack path spans multiple touchpoints, only a layered, cross‑channel defence can detect and disrupt it. Businesses need protection that can identify activity across the full customer journey, rather than looking at each interaction in isolation. This makes it easier to identify fraud patterns as they move from one channel to another.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can also play an important role in helping businesses identify and respond to increasingly sophisticated fraud, particularly through speed, scale, anomaly detection and pattern recognition.

It can process large volumes of interactions in real time and identify patterns that would be difficult for human teams to spot at the same pace and scale. As fraudsters continue to change their tactics, this ability to analyse activity quickly can help businesses move from simply responding to fraud to anticipating potential threats.

This is already playing out on the continent: Infobip’s data shows the AI-powered detection model protecting African operator networks made the largest improvement of any region in 2025, demonstrating that intelligent, automated detection can be effective even at very high fraud volumes.

Most targeted industries

We are seeing the highest concentration of fraud activity in sectors built on high trust, high volume and frequent customer communication, such as financial services, telecoms, e‑commerce, logistics, travel and healthcare. These industries rely heavily on digital interactions and transactions, which naturally create more opportunities for attackers to exploit.

To future‑proof security strategies, organisations should map the full customer journey and identify where fraud can enter or escalate. They should then implement layered controls, including strong authentication, continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, employee awareness and robust customer verification.

The starting point is understanding where customers interact with the business and where those interactions could be vulnerable. From there, organisations can put the right controls in place across the journey, rather than relying on a single point of protection.

Prevention must be ongoing

Most importantly, fraud prevention must be treated as an ongoing capability, not a once‑off project. As technology evolves, fraudsters evolve with it, and only organisations that continuously adapt their defences will stay ahead.

Businesses should also prepare for more automation, impersonation, cross‑channel attacks and identity abuse. We are already seeing how easily criminals can use digital channels to imitate legitimate brands and communicate with customers. For example, the ability to create a business profile on a messaging platform and use the branding of a trusted organisation can make fraudulent communication appear increasingly legitimate.

Ultimately, fraudsters are no longer relying on one tactic or one channel. They are exploiting the full range of digital touchpoints available to them. If a security strategy focuses only on phishing, it is already leaving gaps that attackers can exploit.

Layered security is therefore becoming a business necessity, not a nice-to-have. By combining the right controls, monitoring activity across channels and continuously adapting their approach, organisations can do more to protect their customers as Africa’s digital economy continues to grow.

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