The Non-Governmental Organization CyberSafe Foundation has unveiled a three-year cybersecurity resilience initiative, Resilio Africa, aimed at strengthening the capacity of critical institutions across four African countries to tackle rising cyber threats.
Ms Confidence Staveley, Executive Director of the Foundation, announced this at the inauguration of the initiative in Lagos on Wednesday.
Staveley said the project will support 200 Critical Community Institutions in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa.
She noted that the initiative is designed to protect more than two million people and secure over 15 million public records across the participating countries.
Backed by Google.org, the project will provide free cybersecurity tools, risk assessments, threat intelligence, and incident response support to participating institutions.
According to her, many public and non-profit institutions operate outdated or unpatched systems with limited security budgets and insufficient technical personnel.
She said deeper structural weaknesses—such as poor cyber-risk quantification, limited incident response exercises, and weak business continuity planning—have increased institutional vulnerability.
“The result is that many organizations can detect threats, but fewer can respond quickly, reduce impact, or maintain operations during sustained attacks,” she said.
Staveley said that while awareness of cyber risks is increasing across Africa, decisive action is often constrained by inadequate funding.
“In Africa, we are not lacking in general awareness that we have cyber risk issues. What happens is that the conversation drops off when it gets to the point of taking action,” she said.
The executive director added that financial limitations, rather than lack of willingness alone, are a major barrier to implementing robust cybersecurity measures.
To address this, Resilio Africa will deliver 10,000 hours of free consulting services from cybersecurity experts across the four countries, with the commercial value of the services exceeding one million dollars.
She said the intervention comes amid escalating cyber activity in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Citing a recent threat report, Staveley said the region recorded over 42 million web attacks and 95 million malware-based attacks in the first half of 2025.
She noted that password-stealing malware had risen by more than 60 per cent, while spyware and backdoor tools remain prevalent.
Staveley added that Kenya alone recorded 2.5 billion cyber-threat events in the first quarter of 2025, largely linked to phishing, mobile money fraud, and cloud misconfigurations.
“These are not abstract numbers. They directly affect institutions that people rely on every day,” she said.
She said the initiative aligns with broader efforts by African governments, including Nigeria’s planned cybersecurity framework expected to introduce minimum spending thresholds, mandatory breach reporting timelines, and coordinated response mechanisms.
According to her, strengthening institutional resilience is critical to safeguarding digital transformation gains across the continent.
