AI Now Drives More Than Half of Africa Cybercrime, INTERPOL Finds, as Deepfaked Faces Slip Past Bank Verification

Artificial intelligence has become a central tool of online crime across Africa, according to a new assessment from INTERPOL, which found that the technology now plays a role in fifty five percent of reported cybercrime cases on the continent.

The finding comes from the organization 2026 African Cyberthreat Assessment, a report built on survey data drawn from thirty six African member countries, and it captures how quickly criminals have folded these tools into their operations.

Losses are climbing fast

The financial toll has risen sharply, with reported cybercrime losses surging from one hundred ninety two million dollars in 2024 to four hundred eighty four million dollars over the past two years, a jump that underscores how the threat has scaled.

Online scams remained the most reported category of crime, with attackers reaching victims through mobile money platforms, social media and artificial intelligence, weaving the new tools into methods that were already widespread.

Deepfake technology and machine generated content are increasingly turning up in digital sextortion and online harassment campaigns, with one security firm detecting around six hundred thousand sextortion cases tied to these tactics.

Scams built on synthetic identities

Perhaps the most alarming finding involves identity itself, as criminals across countries such as Tanzania and Kenya have abused AI tools to build entirely synthetic identities by combining stolen personal data with deepfaked biometric faces.

Those fabricated faces were reported to be so realistic that the verification systems used by banks were unable to tell the difference, allowing fraudsters to slip past checks that were designed to keep them out.

The report also documented a regional pattern, with East Africa emerging as a hub of mobile money fraud and ransomware aimed at infrastructure, while business email compromise and romance scams were prolific across Central and West Africa.

An organized industry

The assessment found that seventy two percent of surveyed countries reported the presence of scam centers, with the highest concentration in Southern and West Africa, evidence that much of this activity is organized rather than opportunistic.

Together the findings paint a picture of a criminal economy that is industrializing, using automation to widen its reach, lower its costs and defeat the very safeguards that institutions have relied on for years.

For defenders, the report is a warning that the same tools transforming legitimate business are equally available to fraudsters, and that verification systems built for an earlier era may no longer be enough on their own.