The African Development Bank (AfDB) extends a grant of $2 million to strengthen cybersecurity and boost financial inclusion in Africa.
Accordingly, this grant is to establish the African Cybersecurity Resource Center (ACRC) for Financial Inclusion. Aside from tackling cybercrime across Africa, it will strengthen the resilience of digital financial ecosystems.
Moreover, this comes at a very important time where there are increases in the use of digital channels. The coronavirus pandemic requires various safety protocols demanding less human contact. As such, most financial institutions continue to strengthen their digital platforms and innovate.
Additionally, in 2017, cybercrime cost African countries $3.5 billion, according to Quartz Africa. Digital transactions frequently take place over mobile phones in Africa, many of which are insecure. Addressing this vulnerability is expected to boost trust in financial technology.
Project Coverage
Furthermore, AfDB reveals that the project will take a three-pronged approach:
Creation of an affordable shared platform to monitor cyber-attacks against financial service providers and individual customers,
Rollout of individualized advisory services to enable organisations bolster their cybersecurity,
Enhancement of cybersecurity talent development to ensure that African demand for expertise can be met.
Moreover, the headquarters for the African Cybersecurity Resource Center will be in Dakar, Senegal. Also, sub-regional resource centers will be set up in West and East Africa.
Also, the project will potentially benefit 250 million vulnerable customers and 2,000-3,000 financial institutions across Africa. Under its gender component, ACRC will specifically target improved cybersecurity for 20-25 million women in five years. More so, it aims to employ a workforce made up of at least 39% women.
ACRC is registered as a company under the ownership of Cyber4Dev, a consortium of two Luxembourg-based entities. These entities are Excellium Services and SecurityMadeIn.Lu who will oversee governance and strategic decisions for the project.
In addition, ACRC has two implementing partners: Suricate Solutions and the University of Luxembourg. Suricate Solutions will manage the attack-detection platform and lead the incident response team. On the other hand, University of Luxembourg will coordinate research, development and innovation.
Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI)
Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) is in charge of disbursing the grant. ADFIF is a blended finance vehicle which the institution supports.
Notably, ADFI is a pan-African instrument designed to accelerate digital financial inclusion throughout Africa.
Also, its goal is to ensure that an additional 332 million Africans (60% of them women) have access to the formal financial system.
ADFI’s partners are the French Development Agency (AFD); the French Treasury’s Ministry of Economy and Finance; the Government of Luxembourg’s Ministry of Finance; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the African Development Bank, which also hosts the fund.
Sheila Okiro, the ADFI Coordinator sharing her thoughts on the project made the following comments:
“The ADFI operational team and our partners are excited about this project…a secure digital financial services ecosystem is crucial for sustainable financial inclusion.
“We are counting on the ACRC members and operational partners to help lay the foundation…to systemically tackle rising cybersecurity concerns…and help build a sustainable model for dissemination of these critical services across the continent.”
Sheila Okiro
