INTERPOL’s latest cybercrime report has one headline everybody’s repeating: AI is now linked to 55% of reported cybercrime across Africa.
But that’s only one of several findings from the organisation’s latest African Cyberthreat Assessment.
Drawing on intelligence from law enforcement agencies across 36 African countries, the report paints a worrying picture of cybercrime on the continent. It found that 72% of surveyed countries reported the presence of scam centres; organised operations behind phishing attacks, investment fraud, romance scams and other online crimes. Cybercrime-related losses, meanwhile, jumped from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million in 2025.
Those numbers raise an obvious question: how we take reach here?
The answer becomes clearer when you look at what happened to AI over that same period.
Just two years ago, AI was mostly synonymous with chatbots. Fast forward to today, and it can generate realistic images, clone voices, create convincing videos, browse the web, reason through complex tasks and even complete them on your behalf through AI agents.
At the same time, competition among companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and others made these tools dramatically cheaper and more accessible.
That changed everything. Businesses started automating customer support. Developers began building products faster. Creators found new ways to bring ideas to life. Students gained personalised tutors that could explain almost anything on demand. AI became part of everyday life.
As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats. Unfortunately, that includes the pirate ships too.
The same capabilities helping businesses move faster are also helping 419 people move smarter. AI can write convincing phishing emails, clone voices well enough to impersonate family members, generate fake documents and produce deepfake videos that are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the real thing. According to INTERPOL, AI-powered phishing, deepfake-enabled fraud, synthetic identities and AI-assisted sextortion are now among the fastest-growing cybercrime tactics across the continent.
AI, however, is only one part of INTERPOL’s findings.
The report also points to fragmented cybercrime legislation, uneven law enforcement capabilities and slow cross-border cooperation as major reasons organised cybercriminals continue to thrive. Many agencies across the continent still lack the tools and AI readiness needed to investigate increasingly sophisticated attacks, creating gaps that criminals are quick to exploit.
Note that INTERPOL itself isn’t sitting on the sidelines, either. In the past year alone, four coordinated operations — including Operation Serengeti 2.0 — led to more than 1,500 arrests and recovered over $100 million in stolen funds across the continent. That’s a massive disruption, yet it wasn’t enough to stop the massive losses suffered. If anything, it’s a sign of how much ground law enforcement is trying to make up.
KINI BIG DEAL?
It would be easy to read this report and conclude that AI is making Africa less safe online.
A better way to think about it is this: AI is making EVERYONE more capable.
For businesses, it means doing more with fewer resources. For developers, it means building products in days instead of weeks. For creators, it means producing work that once required entire teams. For students, it means having a tutor that’s available whenever they need one.
Unfortunately, those same capabilities are making cybercriminals more capable too.
Recently, in The Illusion of Reality, we explored how AI is making it harder to tell what’s real from what’s generated. INTERPOL’s latest report shows that this isn’t just an internet thought experiment anymore.
The phishing email that looks unusually convincing. The voice note that sounds exactly like someone you know. The video that seems too real to question. Those are no longer distant possibilities; they’re officially part of the cybercrime playbook.
Not only does the illusion of reality make fake content more believable; it also makes all of us more vulnerable to believing it.
This isn’t just something to armour yourself against alone. Every person who falls for one of these scams makes the next one more convincing, more profitable, and more likely to keep spreading. Staying alert to what’s real and what isn’t is starting to look less like personal caution and more like a responsibility we owe each other.
AI made all of us more capable. Now we need to get more careful, together.
Read the report here: INTERPOL report finds AI linked to more than half of cybercrime in Africa
