E-Business
Overcoming Technical & Infrastructural Challenges For Mobile Research in Africa
Africa is indeed rising but this has not always been the case.On the 13th of May 2000, an international current affairs magazine, The Economist, had on its cover page a portrait of the African continent, within it was the image of an armed guerrilla fighter; its caption read: “The Hopeless Continent”.
Within the pages of that edition, the prognosis on Africa encapsulated the prevailing beliefs held by the majority of those living outside African borders, and by those that considered themselves ‘trapped’ within it. Africa – a starving, poor, disease ridden, fractured, war-torn, corrupt, dying mass of humanity … a former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had described Africa as a “scar on the conscience of the world”.
Fast forward a decade; December 3rd 2011, The Economist magazine caused quite a stir when it came out with a cover titled ‘Africa Rising’ together with an illustration of a boy flying a rainbow-coloured kite the shape of the continent.
Within its pages the magazine paints a scenario of dynamism, resilient entrepreneurial activity, fledging…yet growing economies, nascent…yet stabilizing democracies, a population getting healthier and more educated, an expanding middle class signifying a potential to even out the distribution of wealth.
An Africa, that is “getting its act together”. 54 countries of different ethnicity, culture, language and different levels of development, home to 1.1bn people, the second fastest growing regional economy (second to Asia) and home to more than half of the world’s fastest growing economies.
But not without its challenges, Grand Challenges I must admit.
These include technical and infrastructure challenges in area like education, access to water, energy, healthcare, financial inclusion, public safety and transport and agriculture.
The combination of an Africa Rising and one that still has to overcome challenges represents a significant opportunity for mobile research in African.
In January 2014, Industry Solutions Program Director Mark Walker, IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey offered pieces of advice to any company that wants to play in the African IT, especially mobile ecosystem thus, “Strong GDP growth and high ICT spending levels makes Africa an attractive investment destination in 2014, but as users are becoming more sophisticated and demanding, suppliers need to be more focused and resilient in the year ahead.
Despite a number of constraints, African IT departments have been and will continue to be fairly innovative in their approach to newer technologies.
ICT infrastructure development across the continent will accelerate in 2014, as collaboration between private and public improves, demand for access grows, and competition intensifies.”
Why Africa and Mobile Research?
i. Mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa, alone, are forecasted to exceed 635 million by the end of this year (2014) and predicted to rise to around 930 million by the end of 2019.
A survey conducted by Ericsson supported this submission thus: “Total mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa stood at about 70% at the end of 2013, compared to about 92% globally, and digital technology is “fast becoming a part of everyday life” in the region.
ii. In the first quarter of 2014, Nigeria and South Africa were still the leading sub-Saharan countries in terms of mobile subscription numbers, followed by Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana.
The survey said. “In terms of net additions per country, Nigeria leads, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Ghana.”
The increase in the number of mobile subscribers has fuelled increases in mobile internet use in Africa and {we are considered to be at the cusp of a mobile internet revolution}.
Ericsson: “The region’s mobile data traffic is predicted to grow around 20 times between the end of 2013 and the end of 2019. Globally, mobile data traffic will grow 10-fold during the same period.
iii. Predictions are that mobile internet use in Africa will increase twenty fold in the next five years … {this is double the estimated growth rate in the rest of the world}.
iv. Lower Priced Devices (in particular smartphones and tablets less than $100), increase investment in network infrastructure, and increase availability of spectrum for mobile broadband, are among the factors that will drive this growth.
v. Mobile Subscription statistics: Ericsson reports: In 2013, 99% of subscriptions in Nigeria were prepaid, as were 98% in Kenya and 83% in South Africa, which the survey said are amongst the “top mobile markets in the region in terms of mobile subscriptions”.
Other countries in the region “follow largely the same trend”. (Source: ERICSSON MOBILITY REPORT APPENDIX http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2014/emr-june2014-regional-appendices-ssa.pdf)
vi. One report that highlights this potential predicts that the Internet can contribute up to 300 billion United States dollars to Africa’s GDP by 2025; and this is from an estimated 18 billion in 2013.
This translates directly to opportunities to generate income, to create wealth, to create jobs, new business opportunities, economic expansion, etcetera.
vii. The very opportunities African governments are looking for and need to transform their economies and the economic lives of their populations.
viii. Bridging The Gap Of Limitations From Insufficient Network Coverage And Connectivity
The sing song among the region mobile operators is that the death of necessary infrastructure to operate optimally has formed the subterfuge for poor service delivery.
Some equipment vendors and managed service operators have revealed strategies to overcome the shortcomings giving hope to new entrants in the market.
Some of the strategies include:
– Full passive and active maintenance sharing of cell sites / towers.
{All operators need towers and it is not cost effective to have towers built next door to one another and pass cost to consumers as it were, networks must go beyond passive sharing of towers and power at the towers to active sharing of both the physical and electronic components of the cell sites including radio, antenna etc. and bring down operating cost.
When three operators do this, their cost will come to a third each}.
– With collocation strategy come improved operational availability of individual sites: the length of time the site is able to provide voice and data services to customers, how the sites can be kept running for much longer and faulty components replaced or repaired much faster; all these can aggregate benefits for operators and its subscribers.
– Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Chief Executive believes that when everyone is on the Internet all of our businesses and economies will be better and FB launched its Internet.org project last year to connect billions of people without Internet access in places such as Africa and Asia by working with phone operators.
Understanding What Optimal Mobile Research Design For Africa Should Include:
o African mobile market has always had a huge purchasing potential and can build a strong affinity for value-driven products only if Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) vendors understand the peculiar needs of the African market space. Products must be tailored to meet Africa’s unique infrastructural challenges and consumer behaviours.
o Power challenges must be factored in and the fairly nascent infrastructural development across the continent in the design of mobile products.
o Many of the continent mobile network service providers have infrastructure that struggle to deliver quality voice connections across a wide range resulting to the advent of dual-SIM mobile products by discerning providers.
o Telecommunications infrastructures for landline services are underdeveloped and overburdened and cannot meet Africa’s overwhelming need for voice connections hence the dual-SIM philosophy.
o The product offering must incorporate affordability, aspiration and originality to deliver value to price conscious African consumers the low-end mobile.
o Quite important, the new wave dimensions being introduced into the market requires special skills.
For instance, cloud computing: Vendors or OEMS should endeavour to transfer the requisite knowledge for optimal harnessing of the analytics and for growth.
o Therefore, mobile research techniques require skills that must be transferred or shared for the benefit of the OEMs, the researchers and the end-users.
Africa has made giant strides in the past decades in telecommunications and seek Mobile giants partnership in the rise from the ashes.
Africa is now one of the world’s fastest growing economies averaging an annual growth rate of more than five percent with a growing middle class that craves premium smart phone experience.- the low and middle end mobile devices very ideal.
Security Challenges In Protecting Mobile Research Assets – Men, Material, Machine In Africa:
Running the network on a day-to-day basis involves facing stakeholders such as communities, touts etc and managing their expectations can be challenging.
– There are lots of people in the value chain that must be partnered with to help maintain the correct engagement with customers.
Local communities can be used to help make sure local customs are understood and respected, support communities where possible and generally be seen as a friendly face in those communities and a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.
Engage with the communities so that they understand what the operators are trying to achieve and find a way to work with them for the mutual benefit of all parties.
On the 2nd of September 2014 African leaders during the 455th African Union Peace and Security Council (AUPSC) mull special fund to fight terrorism.
Poor energy supply inducing economic crisis and literal death of night economy: Inadequate energy supply from central grid in the continent force industrialist/entrepreneur to provide their own energy at extra cost to live and to produce goods and services – leading from low profit, to loss and even premature closure of businesses.
Various Countries of the continent in the spirit of Rising Africa are awake to the challenge – Recently, South African Energy Minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson unfolded plans to address weaknesses in the process of commissioning renewable-power projects, seeking to cut the use of coal for electricity and building Africa’s two largest coal-fired power plants.
On the 3rd of September 2014, the Federal Government of Nigeria ratified a Thirty-Year National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) that would cost $3.05 trillion to execute.
The plan will among other things address the lack of linkages in the infrastructure sector including energy, transport, housing, water and ICT.
National Agency For Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) in Safeguarding the Health of the Nigerian Nation launched Mobile Authentication Service (MAS) for checking quality of Drugs, Putting the power of detecting counterfeit medicine in the hands of the CONSUMERS … How to use ‘MAS’…. Scratch Card to reveal PIN Text PIN to any of the Numbers on the product, Wait for an SMS response before you pay/use the medicine.
Above all, it is a transformation time. However,
Technical Knowledge Gap: Maintaining Well Trained, Motivated And Properly Equipped Staff
– The African continent is blessed with abundant human and natural resources; however the dramatic advancement of technology over the past five years has resulted in a gap in IT competencies and skills availability in the continent.
At a recent gathering of experts in San Francisco, United States, for the 2014 Oracle World, a global ICT event, which brings the technology community together, African governments were again urged to create an enabling environment that would encourage growth of ICT skills.
– Ability to maintain a staff strength that is well trained, motivated and properly equipped to do the key jobs in ICT and mobile research industry is a key challenge in Africa.
Today our stock of graduates is still highly skewed towards the humanities and social sciences, while the share of our students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) averages less than 25 per cent}.
African young generation must be equipped with the modern skills and knowledge they need to find African solutions to Africa’s challenges.
African Universities must produce home-grown excellence that bridge the gap between what is being taught in universities and the realities of the market place.
Africa’s new partners in this regard – such as Brazil, China, India and Korea can play important role in building human capital in Africa.
The continent needed to build a roadmap for skills development in ICT then much of the work will be done by people on the ground that are trained and motivated to work safely and effectively.
Organisations must have ready access to people capable of sitting up and maintaining systems and develop ability for adequate Talent management.
Slok mobile phone had been built to be sold in Nigeria and across Africa by Slok Group – a utility phone focusing the lowest end of the mobile phone market that represents larger proportion of the Africa population.
Being paper presented by Kanu iroegbu at inaugural mobile research marketing world conference (MRMW) 2014 held in South Africa recently. http://mrmw.net/speakers-capetown2014
Kaspersky’s Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) reveals key cyber threat trends for the first half of 2026 at the recent Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa region (META).
As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, cyberthreats are becoming increasingly diverse and sophisticated. The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with ongoing geopolitical and economic instability, is contributing to the rise of cybercrime and the growing complexity of cyberattacks.
According to Kaspersky’s telemetry, online threats exploiting vulnerabilities in websites, emails and web services continued to affect millions of users across the META region during the first half of 2026.
Specifically, Kaspersky detection systems stopped 1,6M attacks from various online resources in Nigeria. Turkiye recorded the highest percentage of users affected by web-based threats at 22.8%, followed by Kenya (21.2%), Qatar (19.3%), Nigeria (18.4%) and South Africa (17.2%). In contrast, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan registered the lowest share of users targeted by web-borne attacks in the region.
AI is transforming attacker operations
Kaspersky experts report that threat actors are increasingly integrating AI into different stages of their operations. Large language models are already being used to generate phishing emails, malicious code and supporting operational content.
AI is also beginning to play a larger role in malware development. Modern language models are capable of generating substantial portions of malicious software, from initial code scaffolding to functional modules.
Researchers have already observed AI-assisted malware development in campaigns linked to the FunkSec group, which deployed Rust-based malware capable of data theft, encryption and process manipulation. Similarly, during the RevengeHotels campaign in 2025, threat actors used large language models to generate portions of the infector and downloader code.
“We expect AI to remain one of the key factors shaping the threat landscape in 2026, as we already see how it is reshaping attacker workflows and accelerating their operations,” said Sergey Lozhkin, Head of Global Research and Analysis Team in APAC and META regions at Kaspersky. “By lowering the time and cost required to develop and adapt malicious tools, AI allows threat actors to iterate faster and scale their efforts. Defenders should be prepared for quicker shifts in tactics.”
Emerging trends shaping the cyber threat landscape
In addition to the growing use of AI by cybercriminals, Kaspersky experts identified several trends that organisations should monitor closely:
- AI-driven malware evolution: generative models can rewrite malware in different languages or architectures, making malicious code harder to detect, and faster to deploy at scale.
- Cloud-based data exfiltration: attackers increasingly route stolen data through legitimate cloud and file-sharing services to blend in with normal traffic.
- Ransomware targeting operations: some groups disrupt production and business processes, not just encrypt data, to increase pressure for payment.
- AI agents as persistence mechanisms: some AI agent solutions are granted broad or even full system access. If compromised, attackers could modify the system prompt or the agent’s configuration, for example, causing it to download a payload on every startup.
- Malicious AI skills become a new attack vector: as AI agents gain broader access to enterprise systems, attackers start to exploit compromised skills to manipulate agent behaviour, steal sensitive data, execute unauthorised actions, and establish persistent access. This creates a new layer of risk where trusted AI tools can be turned into powerful mechanisms for cyberattacks.
As cyberthreats continue to evolve alongside emerging technologies, Kaspersky recommends that organisations strengthen their cybersecurity posture through continuous vulnerability management, timely patching, employee awareness training, threat intelligence, and advanced security solutions like Kaspersky Next, capable of detecting sophisticated and AI-assisted attacks.
E-Business
Kaspersky Uncovers New Mirage Kitten Malware Used in Cyber-espionage Campaign Across Africa, Others
Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) has discovered a previously undocumented malware set used by Mirage Kitten APT. The findings were revealed at its annual Kaspersky Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa (META).
The malicious tools were used in a targeted campaign aimed at maintaining long-term access to victim networks and stealing sensitive data.
The company’s researchers have identified victims of this campaign across the Middle East and Africa, including organisations in Egypt, small and medium-sized businesses and government entities in Jordan and Tanzania, aviation organisations in Pakistan, telecommunications companies in Ethiopia and financial-sector entities in Burkina Faso.
The toolset consists of three custom programs. At its core is NightLedger, a newly discovered Windows backdoor attributed to the group based on code and behavioural similarities to its previously known malware, which gives the attackers remote control over infected machines: they can run commands, explore and transfer files and capture screenshots.
It is complemented by two covert tunneling tools, ArcBridge and BridgeHead, which effectively turn a compromised computer into a relay node: the attackers run their tools on their own servers, while all the resulting traffic is quietly funneled through the victim’s machine, as if it originated from inside the victim’s network.
This lets them slip past network defences and preserve long-term access without drawing attention. The first of these tools was identified in April 2026 in activity targeting victims in the Middle East.
While the initial access vector remains unclear in most cases, Kaspersky GReAT researchers observed BridgeHead being deployed during post-compromise activity in victim environments in Egypt and at an aerospace and aviation organisation in Pakistan. In those cases, the intrusion activity followed targeted spear-phishing attempts consistent with the group’s known methods.
The lures were highly tailored including recruitment-themed messages impersonating trusted brands and hiring platforms, as well as fake videoconferencing pages that redirected victims to malicious archive files hosted on third-party file-sharing services.
“Based on our latest findings, we conclude that Mirage Kitten continues to evolve its malware arsenal in support of targeted cyber-espionage operations across the Middle East and Africa.
“Another notable aspect of the campaign is the group’s continued reliance on tunneling utilities as part of its operational toolkit: in practice this enables attackers to bypass network controls, maintain covert access to compromised environments and significantly complicate detection efforts.
“Given the persistence and sophistication of these techniques, organisations and defenders should incorporate these findings into their threat assessments and strengthen their detection and response capabilities accordingly,” says Omar Amin, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT.
Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has directed all Data Controllers and Data Processors of Major Importance (DCPMIs), yet to register with the commission to do so immediately.
This followed a Federal High Court judgment affirming NDPC statutory powers to designate and register such entities.
DCPMIs are entities operating in Nigeria that handle sensitive personal data or large volumes of information, requiring mandatory registration with the NDPC under the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA).
In a statement issued on Tuesday by Babatunde Bamigboye, head of Legal, Enforcement and Regulations at the NDPC, described the judgment as a major milestone for data accountability and regulatory oversight in Nigeria.
The commission said the ruling arose from a suit filed by Emmanuel Harunna against the NDPC in Emmanuel Harunna v. NDPC (FHC/L/CS/1116/2024), in which the applicant sought a declaration that Point of Sale agents were not Data Controllers or Processors of Major Importance under the Nigeria Data Protection Act and requested a perpetual injunction restraining the commission from registering them.
According to the statement, Justice F.N. Ogazi examined the commission’s Guidance Notice on Registration alongside Sections 5(d), 6(c), 44, 45 and 65 of the Nigeria Data Protection Act before concluding that the commission acted within its statutory powers in designating entities under the Major Data Processing – Ordinary High Level category as Data Controllers and Processors of Major Importance.
Quoting the judgment, the statement read, “The Nigeria Data Protection Act was enacted to promote accountability, transparency and responsible data governance. Registration enables the Respondent to identify entities engaged in significant data processing activities, monitor compliance.”
It added that the court held that, “Far from undermining the constitutional right to privacy, the registration framework is one of the statutory mechanisms designed to safeguard that very right by subjecting data controllers and data processors to effective regulatory oversight.”
The statement further quoted the court as saying, “Looking at the recitals of the Guidance Notice, there is every indication that the Guidance Notice is also aimed at protecting the privacy and security of data subjects, thus bringing the registration requirement of the Guidance Notice within the protective shield of Section 45 of the 1999 Constitution.”
According to the commission, the court also held that, “Remarkably, Section 63 of the Data Protection Act provides that the provisions of the Act shall prevail over any other law inconsistent with its provisions on matters relating to the processing of personal data.”
Reacting to the judgment, the commission described the decision as a significant boost to Nigeria’s data protection regime.
“The Commission appreciates the ground-breaking efforts of the court towards the advancement of the jurisprudence relating to data accountability in Nigeria, as eloquently demonstrated in this case,” the statement read.
Following the ruling, Vincent Olatunji, national commissioner and chief executive officer, had directed every Data Controller and Processor of Major Importance that had yet to comply with the registration requirement to register without delay.
The commission warned that entities failing to comply with the registration requirement could face legal consequences.
“Failure to register creates serious legal liabilities under the law, while compliance with registration requirements builds public trust and safeguards the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects in Nigeria,” the statement added.
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