INTERPOL report exposes regulatory gaps and the new arms race
By Prince Ahenkorah
Ghanaians lost an estimated US$1.3 million to mobile money fraud in the first quarter of 2025 alone, according to INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026. The figure, while stark, is almost certainly understated many victims never report, and telcos often absorb losses quietly.
Yet the trend is unmistakable: digital financial services, once hailed as a leapfrog development tool, have become a playground for organised cybercrime.
Mobile money fraud now tops INTERPOL’s list of online scams, with 97% of surveyed African countries naming it a major threat. Kenya is the regional poster child authorities detected over 123,000 fraudulent SIM cards linked to SIM-swap scams in 2025 alone, a tactic that allows criminals to intercept one-time passwords and empty wallets.
Ghana is not far behind, but its regulatory response has been sluggish. The National Communications Authority (NCA) and Bank of Ghana have issued circulars, but enforcement remains piecemeal, and the fragmented telecom-banking ecosystem makes real-time data sharing nearly impossible.
The report’s most sobering finding is the role of artificial intelligence. AI now powers 55% of reported cybercrimes across Africa from voice cloning and deepfake extortion to automated phishing that mimics trusted contacts.
The result is a new generation of attacks that are faster, more convincing, and harder to detect. For Ghanaian consumers, this means a fake caller sounding like a relative, or a seemingly official MoMo promo that steals credentials.
For regulators, it means a weapon they are ill-equipped to counter; the report notes that “fragmented cybercrime legislation and limited AI readiness among law enforcement” leave most countries exposed.
Since 2024, total cybercrime losses across Africa have more than doubled from $192 million to $484 million driven largely by AI-enabled scams. The INTERPOL report also flags digital sextortion (600,000 deepfake cases detected by partner TrendAI) and business email compromise, where Ghana-based syndicates now target European and North American firms with AI-generated emails. The continent’s 1.1 billion mobile subscribers represent a vast attack surface, and the criminals are exploiting it with industrial efficiency.
Seventy-two percent of countries surveyed now host known scam centres, with West Africa and Southern Africa recording the highest concentrations. Ghana’s own cybercrime hubs are well-documented, yet prosecutions remain rare. The report’s call for stronger digital forensics and cross-border collaboration is diplomatic; the subtext is that many governments are reluctant to crack down on an industry that generates foreign exchange and local employment however illicit.
There is some progress: 17 countries enacted or amended cybercrime laws in 2025, and INTERPOL’s four coordinated operations (Serengeti 2.0, Contender 3.0, Sentinel, Red Card 2.0) netted 1,500 arrests and recovered over $100 million. But as Neal Jetton, INTERPOL’s Cybercrime Director, puts it: “AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack.”
For Ghana, the $1.3 million quarterly loss is not just a financial leakage it’s a warning that the digital economy’s growth is outpacing its governance. The government’s recent promise of a national cybersecurity authority remains unimplemented, and the banks and telcos continue to treat fraud as a cost of doing business rather than an existential threat.
Until Accra bridges the gap between policy paper and operational reality, the numbers will only climb. And as AI gets smarter, so will the scammers while the regulators, for now, are still catching up to the last generation of tricks.