By Kerissa Varma, Microsoft Chief Security Advisor, Africa
Africa’s digital economy is accelerating at remarkable pace, drawing millions of first-time users into mobile money, e-commerce, digital lending and AI-enabled public services. But its continued success will depend on more than access, innovation or investment. It will depend on whether people believe the digital systems they use are safe, accountable and worthy of their personal data, money and participation.
Across the continent, fraud, identity theft and cybercrime are actively shaping how Africans choose to engage with digital services, and they are fast becoming the single most important factor in whether an organisation earns a customer or loses one. Trust is no longer a soft reputational asset – it is the critical infrastructure of the digital economy, and the factor that will determine whether Africa’s digital momentum translates into lasting, inclusive growth.
TransUnion’s H1 2026 Digital Fraud Trends in Africa report found that security of personal data has overtaken product quality as the leading factor African consumers weigh when deciding whom to transact with online. In fact, 77 percent of consumers cited confidence that their personal data is secure as the most important feature when choosing whom to transact with online.
In Kenya, 91 percent of consumers rank confidence that their data will not be compromised as their top consideration, ahead of South Africa at 88 percent and well above the global average of 67 percent. And as the PwC 2025 East Africa Digital Trust Insights report finds, this is reshaping behaviour in ways that carry direct consequences for companies.
Fraud has become a barrier to growth, not just a security cost
Trust is hard-won but very easily eroded, and African consumers are quick to act on their concerns. Eighty percent of Kenyan consumers say they will not return to a platform where fraud has occurred, and 67 percent say they have already switched to a different website because of security concerns, far above the 50 percent global benchmark.
Exposure to fraud attempts is widespread, too – more than 70 percent of consumers in Kenya reported being targeted by fraud in a single three-month period, against a global average of 43 percent. And a third of those who lost money were caught through third-party seller scams on otherwise legitimate e-commerce platforms, with fraud increasingly migrating into trusted environments rather than obviously suspicious ones – a shift that makes verification and transparency more important than ever.
Identity is now the front line
What unites these patterns is identity. Fraudsters are moving away from crude, easily detected attacks towards the exploitation of genuine credentials and established trust. Microsoft’s 2025 Digital Defense Report confirmed that identity has become the primary battleground, with attackers increasingly bypassing firewalls to log in rather than break in. Deepfake incidents in Africa surged sevenfold from Q2 to Q4 of 2024, as AI tools made it easier to create fake identities and manipulate biometric data.
As much as AI offers incredible opportunities for those engaged in fighting cybercrime, it is also a powerful tool for fraudsters. Fraud isn’t being reinvented by AI – it just lowers the barrier to entry and is easier to scale and more efficient. The Digital Defense report noted a 195 percent increase in AI-generated identity documents used to defeat verification checks, with AI-driven phishing now roughly three times more effective than traditional campaigns. Deepfake incidents in Africa surged sevenfold from Q2 to Q4 of 2024, as AI tools made it easier to create fake identities and manipulate biometric data. Attackers are also increasingly harnessing AI to craft phishing messages tailored to local languages and cultural contexts and to impersonate trusted individuals.
Data theft was the goal in nearly 80 percent of the cyber incidents Microsoft investigated on the continent, driven overwhelmingly by financial motives. INTERPOL’s 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment found that business email compromise (BEC) has emerged as the most financially damaging threat. While it represented only about 2 percent of observed activity, it accounted for 21 percent of successful attacks, surpassing ransomware. Eleven African nations account for the majority of BEC activity originating from the continent, with a concentration of BEC activity in Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and South Africa. Tellingly, 90% of African countries reported needing significant improvement in their law enforcement or prosecution capacity – a capability gap that fraudsters are actively exploiting.
Africa is proving that scale and safety can coexist
Despite the statistics, Africa is demonstrating it can grow digital participation without a proportional rise in fraud. The rate of suspected digital fraud in South Africa fell from 9 percent in 2020 to 4.6 percent in 2024, while Kenya’s dropped from 9.3 percent to 5.0 percent – both now falling below the global average. In Nigeria, 67,518 fraud incidents were recorded in 2025, according to NIBSS data, continuing a five-year downward trend since 2021.
Consumer vigilance and improved controls are working in tandem. African consumers are ahead of many global peers in adopting secure verification, with fingerprint biometrics now the preferred method, reaching 63 percent in Kenya against a global average of 53 percent. In Nigeria, Bank Identity Verification (BVN) registrations grew by 6,8% year-on-year between 2024 and 2025, while research shows that fraud cases decreased by about 10-15% after the proliferation of 2FA in the country.
This appetite for mobile-first, layered security is a strategic asset that forward-looking organisations can build on. Africa now has an opportunity to set global standards rather than simply catching up, proving that inclusive digital growth and hard-edged security are not competing priorities but the same objective.
The leadership imperative
The lesson for African business and government leaders is that trust can no longer be delegated to the security team as a technical afterthought. It is a growth imperative that belongs in the boardroom. The organisations that will lead Africa’s digital future are those that treat security, transparency and accountability as foundational to every digital interaction, designing friction-right journeys that protect customers without frustrating them, communicating openly when incidents occur, and extending protection across the entire customer lifecycle rather than concentrating it at onboarding. This will require investment in adaptive, real-time fraud detection, continued adoption of strong digital identity verification and phishing-resistant authentication, and deeper collaboration and intelligence-sharing across sectors and borders.
In a digital economy, trust is the infrastructure on which everything else is built. The businesses and governments that understand this first will not only reduce fraud; they will earn the loyalty of a generation of digitally engaged Africans who have made it clear that if these objectives are not met, they will take their trust, and their transactions, elsewhere.