E-Business
Africa in Motion: Accelerating Africa’s Digital Future
By Fadi Pharaon
As a continent with very high potential for growing economies, how can African countries accelerate their digital adoption and leapfrog into a new era of socio-economic prosperity?
This could be achieved by leveraging new technologies that make it easier to conduct business, raise productivity and efficiency while encouraging an inclusive society. Embracing new ways of enabling positive change will boost livelihoods, promote financial inclusion and improve access to health, education, government services and more.
With the ambition of supporting the acceleration of Africa’s digitization journey, we are working jointly with our customers – the service providers – and other stakeholders across the continent to enable #AfricaInMotion.
Digitization Boosting Economies
We believe that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is the catalyst for digital transformation, with mobile networks being the crucial ingredient in increasing Africa’s economic competitiveness in the global arena. While we have witnessed impressive market developments in recent years, Africa’s ICT sector still has growth potential compared to leading economies.
As digital infrastructure and transaction become increasingly impactful to the development of the African societies and economies, affordable broadband access will need to be extended to over a billion individuals to bridge the “digital divide” and enable them to reap the benefits of the digital economy.
The Ericsson Mobility Report shows us that, by 2025, 77% of subscriptions in the Middle East and North Africa are expected to be for mobile broadband, while in Sub-Saharan Africa mobile broadband subscriptions will increase to reach around 72% of mobile subscriptions.
Mobile broadband connectivity not only offers great potential to transform cities and industries, but it enables connectivity as a basic human right; fostering inclusion and making a positive, sustainable economic impact.
With our commitment to innovation and long history of engaging in Africa’s telecom industry, we at Ericsson are driven to deliver the next-generation technology solutions to Africa. These can enable sweeping changes to industrial production, allow seamless access to societal services and provide people with ways of living harmoniously with their environment.
Sustainability Through Connectivity
Bridging the “digital divide” is a demanding journey both for the public sector and the telecoms industry. This carries significant potential to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. In order to achieve that, we have a continuous on-going journey serving several parameters.
And the story just begins here. We strongly believe in the importance of education for the economic development of Africa by building the right foundation to propel a steady eco-system.
Our efforts to support education in Africa is a continuous determination and for that we are proud to launch our three-year global partnership with UNICEF that will help map school connectivity in 35 countries by the end of 2023. Our partnership will support the UN’s Giga initiative, a global program led by UNICEF and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that aims to connect every school to the Internet.
Another key example in supporting education is our “Connect to Learn” program, an initiative that implements Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in schools often in resource poor settings to enhance the quality and access to teaching and learning resources in a safe, cost effective, and user-friendly way.
The program uses the power of mobility, broadband and cloud solutions. Since 2008, we have helped to connect over 500,000 people, students and teachers at remote villages across 10 sub-Saharan countries with technology tools, digital learning resources and new interactive forms of teaching pedagogies.
Furthermore, another testimony that reiterates our efforts in supporting education, is our recently announced “Ericsson Educate” initiative with UNESCO. In response to how the global COVID-19 Pandemic, UNESCO and Ericsson have launched a new portal for teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI) to children.
Teaching AI is a learning program, which includes a free, multi-lingual artificial intelligence (AI) skills portal that can be accessed globally by parents and teachers, enabling them to support children and students in home learning environments to learn about AI.
Additionally, we have also launched recently our Digital Lab program in South Africa. The program represents Ericsson’s commitment to supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals – especially Goal #4, with the aim of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.
The Ericsson Digital Lab program is an innovative education program targeted towards older children to support them in their first encounters with the world of programming and new technologies.
The program started in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a collaboration with Universeum, a public science centre based in Gothenburg. During 2019-20 the program was expanded to South Africa. We partnered with “Wot-If? Trust” to bring this innovative digital skills program to the youth in Diepsloot, Johannesburg, South Africa and our ambition is to expand this initiative to more young students across Africa.
On the other hand, we also focus on another fundamental goal and that is financial inclusion through the use of digital technology which is an essential element in furthering the economic development of Africa. Mobile money services have become an essential, life-changing tool across the continent, providing access to safe and secure financial services but also to energy, health, education and employment opportunities.
One key example to showcase our efforts in that area is our Ericsson Wallet Platform that allows users to store, transfer and withdraw money; pay merchants and utility providers; and use financial services such as savings and loans.
With connectivity acting as a critical enabler of social and economic change, sustainable technologies that support the SDGs are the need of the hour.
According to Ericsson research, ICT solutions could help to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 15% by 2030, amounting to around ten gigatons of CO2e—more than the current carbon footprint of the EU and US combined.
Examples of areas where the savings can be enabled by ICT solutions are transportation, energy, industries and agriculture. This is reflected in our initiatives such as Ericsson Weather Data and Mixed Reality for Urban Design.
Clearly, the SDGs provide a unique opportunity for interesting discussions that will lead to more multi-sectoral partnerships and opportunities that will help spur progress towards meeting the goals.
Partnerships and Collaborations for Societal Impact
What is now needed is a framework that facilitates harnessing the power of ICTs to foster inclusive socioeconomic development across Africa. However, this bridging of the digital divide – which promises to level the global playing field so Africa can achieve its full potential – requires a well-planned policy and regulatory environment.
A conducive, enabling policy environment that generates regulatory certainty is key to encouraging market development through partnerships, entrepreneurship, job creation and knowledge sharing. Factors like:
- Timely availability of ample, cost-effective and harmonized spectral resources
- Support of long-term stable network regulations that uphold the principle of technology neutrality, stimulate investments and foster infrastructure competition
- Provision of free flow of data, while ensuring data protection, privacy and security regulation
We at Ericsson Middle East and Africa are constantly looking for opportunities to collaborate and engage with partners across the board to facilitate such policy development to fast tracking digitization across the African continent and our recent collaboration with the African Telecommunications Union is one clear example.
Fostering and Empowering Local Talents
At Ericsson, we strongly believe in the great competencies of the local talents in each market where we operate and for that we continue to offer our employees opportunities that guide and supports them from a knowledge, competence, and skill development perspective — to foster an innovative, high-impact learning culture focused on continuous development.
Additionally, coaching and mentoring are critical elements of career development at Ericsson. We have best-in-class mentors who guide our people in Africa through every stage of their career, empowering them to seek more learning and growth opportunities.
One of the initiatives we launched in-light of our efforts to supporting young talents is our “Ericsson Graduates Program “, a program that will offer fresh graduates a chance to join experienced Ericsson staff for on-the-job, online and classroom learning followed by recruitment to join the Ericsson world.
The program also engages with young talents from Africa -the Change makers-to explore and identify innovative ideas, which reflect and capture the needs of the continent with an ambition to accelerate the African markets’ digitalization journey.
The Change makers attend multidisciplinary sessions with Ericsson specialists spanning across technology, business and entrepreneur to empower and enable them to ideate and work on their ideas in a well-rounded approach. Our ambition is to continue with this program and train and hire more fresh graduates in the coming period.
When it comes to empowering young talents and innovation, we can proudly mention the Ericsson Innovation Awards (EIA), a global competition that gives university students the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality by collaborating with EIA mentors.
In 2018, a team from Senegal has been selected as the overall winner of the Ericsson Innovation Awards winning an amount of 25,000 Euros for their idea that addresses lack of school labs in Africa. This year we are excited to launch the same competition very soon and we look forward to receiving ideas from young students from Africa and across the world.
Accelerating the Future
As we look ahead, it’s clear that Africa shows significant promise for economic, technological and infrastructure growth over the coming years. Yet, there are still many challenges we must overcome if we are to deliver real sustainable change for all.
While there are parts of the continent trialing 5G services, majority of countries remain focusing on 3G and 4G as smartphone affordability improves year on year. The development of advanced wireless digital infrastructure is an integral part of Africa’s growing economy.
Mobile broadband access has proved to be an essential driver of an inclusive information society that integrates digitization in all critical aspects of life, such as education, transport, health, energy and even homeland security. Never has this been more evident than during the current COVID 19 pandemic.
Ericsson focuses on assuring best performing networks in Africa, while also offering the best digital services and solutions to our customers. Our aim is to create a unique customer experience evolving from networks adopting automation, artificial intelligence and analytics.
One of our focus areas also is reducing time-to-market and flexibility in launching services for our customers towards their subscribers. From an operations perspective, we emphasis driving service delivery efficiency through adoption of advanced tools. We will continue our purposeful growth of mobile broadband, fixed wireless access and fintech services so that our service provider partners reach out to further communities across the continent.
Our promise to Africa
Tackling the digital divide, continuing to build a robust ICT infrastructure, promoting sustainability, innovation, education and entrepreneurship will be critical for maximizing the role of technology in boosting resilience and inclusive growth in Africa.
By achieving that, Africa will experience a paradigm shift on all levels with new game-changers as e-health, e-government and e-education; the African society will accelerate into a much economically advanced nation. However, collaboration between the different stakeholders in the ecosystem becomes even more important than ever to achieve this vision.
Our promise and commitment towards Africa are to always support a world where digitalization is transforming the eco-system; enabling sustainable growth, economic development and opening up opportunities for all.
To accelerate our promise to Africa and achieve a true impact, we are looking forward to supporting our customers in their quest, bringing our latest innovation, leveraging our global skill and scale to the benefit of Africa’s digital development.
Fadi Pharaon is President of Ericsson Middle East and Africa
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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