Africa under cyber attack: who's really safe online?
A recent Interpol crackdown exposed the extent of cybercrime in Africa. Experts say the issue is complex and requires international cooperation.
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00:00Now welcome to a special report on a pressing issue that affects millions of people across the continent, the African continent.
00:08And as the digital landscape continues to expand across the globe, Africa has also seen some dark underbelly of online scams.
00:17Recent crackdown by Interpol has revealed just how rampant these fraudulent activities have become in Africa, raising critical questions about internet safety.
00:27Today, we dive deep into this debate. Can Africa truly protect its citizens from the relentless rise of online scams?
00:34Or are we left to navigate this treacherous and virtual world on our own?
00:40So, I mean, I know we concentrate today on Africa, but I don't think that, you know, Africans and law enforcement are any worse off than, say, the rest of the world.
00:50You know, our operations did concentrate and focus on Africa.
00:54But as you mentioned, Michael, the operation resulted in a net of identification of 88,000 victims.
01:01Those are based in Africa. So we were able to hopefully the law enforcement there is able to support them and help them.
01:07We're also able to the African law enforcement able to arrest 1,200 suspects, potential, you know, cyber cyber criminals.
01:15So in that regard, yes. But I also think that one of the things that Interpol tries to do is we, the credit for all these arrests goes to the African law enforcement agencies.
01:26What Interpol does is we help support and coordinate those efforts.
01:29But what we will do before the operation is we will bring in law enforcement together who are going to participate in the Operation 18, as you mentioned.
01:35Yes, actually, that's that was supposed to be my follow up question about the involvement of some of these security personnel and maybe the law enforcement in different countries.
01:48Now, you look at a major situation whereby each and every day we have victims, people who are coming forth, you know, showing us that they've lost this.
01:58They've gone through this. How is this effective in terms of even protecting those who are in diaspora, those who are outside Africa?
02:06Because some of these activities, they're not just happening within the borders, within the Africa, but you find that it's sort of like a ring.
02:14So how is it this even protective in terms of including those in the diaspora?
02:21Yeah. So, I mean, cyber crime is very, very complex.
02:25I mean, you can have the cyber criminals in on one continent.
02:29You can have the equipment and the infrastructure that they're using based somewhere else on a different continent.
02:33And victims are going to be global. So so to be able to be successfully combat transnational cyber crime, what you need is cooperation and collaboration.
02:42I think that's where Interpol's greatest strength is. We have 196 countries that we can connect.
02:47And to your point, yeah, you will have operations and criminal activity in all over the world and they will target Africans.
02:56And then you will have, you know, criminals, criminal activity that's based in Africa that will target, you know, potential victims, you know, again, outside of Africa.
03:05So the hope is that we were able to, through Interpol channels, that law enforcement across the globe will connect to us and the cyber crime director here and say, hey, we need some assistance.
03:15We need some contacts. We need to be able to identify and notify some victims in a separate country, continent, wherever.
03:22And that's that's where we we hopefully can can play a big role.
03:27And I think most importantly, I would say data protection is fundamental.
03:33We need to be very sincere about where we are at in Africa in terms of protecting the data of its citizens.
03:40And last but not least, of course, do process based cyber crime enforcement.
03:43I think we cannot end a problem without these three elements.
03:47So I would say no switches or silence, but I would say more empowerment and accountability and capacity building of people.
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