AGCG keynote at the Brazza Cybersecurity Forum: how to put organisational, technological and AI-driven innovation at the service of an effective, realistic and sovereign digital defence for African organisations.
Theme : Cyber innovation, AI, SOC & digital sovereignty in Africa
Event : Brazza Cybersecurity Forum
Firm : AGCG Genuine Consulting Group
If global cybercrime were a country, it would be the third-largest economy in the world after the United States and China. For African organisations, this means the risk is no longer marginal : it is systemic.
The average cost of a data breach exceeds 4 million US dollars per incident. In economies where budgetary room for manoeuvre is more limited, a single major incident can put a ministry, a bank, an energy operator or an SME under long-lasting pressure.
In 2025, the annual cost of cybercrime worldwide is estimated at nearly 9.5 trillion US dollars. Behind these staggering amounts lie very concrete stakes for States, regulators, infrastructure operators, banks, insurers, industrial players and African SMEs.
For a ministry, it is about continuity of government and citizens’ trust. For an energy or telecom operator, the availability of vital services. For a bank or insurance company, the stability of the financial system. For an industrial company, sometimes the survival of the business itself.
And yet, one question comes up again and again, very directly : "Okay, we understand that cybersecurity is important. But here in Africa, in Congo, with our realities… what can we actually do in practice?"
This keynote offers a pragmatic response to that question : to look reality in the eye, clarify what really matters and use innovation – organisational, technological and AI-driven – as a lever for digital defence and sovereignty, rather than just another buzzword.
Africa is no longer on the sidelines of cyberthreats : several studies show that African organisations are now subject to a significant share of major ransomware campaigns, even though the continent represents a smaller portion of the global digital economy.
In some regions, more than 30 % of reported crimes are already linked to cybercrime : online scams, ransomware, digital extortion, business email compromise, mobile-banking fraud.
On the ground, attacks primarily target :
In some countries, losses linked to digital fraud and mobile banking already amount to hundreds of millions of US dollars per year, with the number of incidents rising sharply.
Globally, the average cost of a data breach is estimated at more than 4 million US dollars per incident. In an African context where budgets are constrained, a single serious incident can put a ministry, regulator, bank or SME under lasting strain.
The question is therefore no longer "Will we be attacked?", but rather "When it happens, will we be ready?" – and will we have made the right decisions in time, or too late?
When we talk about innovation in cybersecurity, we spontaneously think of AI, XDR and EDR solutions, automated SOCs… and often of highly advanced, sometimes very expensive technologies. Yet no organisation can respond to the rise in threats by simply stacking tools on top of each other.
Innovation starts with the ability, at the level of a ministry, an operator or a company, to say :
That means putting numbers on the potential cost of a prolonged outage, the political or social impact of a data leak, and the financial exposure linked to interruptions in payments, supply chains or production.
Faced with the volume of vulnerabilities, audits and projects to secure, it is no longer possible to handle issues one by one. Organisational innovation means setting up real "cyber factories" :
The key is to be able to answer the questions : "What is our real remediation rate? How quickly are we reducing risk?"
In a world where a large share of attacks involve ransomware and directly target essential services, the SOC can no longer be a technical "black box" : screens, logs, misunderstood alerts and a monthly fee.
A living SOC is a capability that :
In 2025, a major AI company reported having detected and stopped one of the first cyber-espionage campaigns largely orchestrated by an AI system, led by a state-sponsored group. An AI, designed to assist developers, was hijacked to scan the Internet, look for vulnerabilities, generate exploit code, steal credentials and automate lateral movement within networks.
Several dozen targets were hit across finance, industry, technology and government. This was neither an exercise nor science-fiction : it was a real campaign, stopped in time, and it marks a clear inflection point.
For African States and organisations, this shift implies at least three things :
Threat-intelligence reports on Africa already highlight growing use of AI by cybercriminals : more convincing phishing, automated malware distribution, wide-scale fraud campaigns. In other words : AI will not only be a defensive tool, it is already a tool of attack.
The question therefore becomes : how will African States, operators and companies themselves use innovation and AI to protect their systems, their citizens and their economies?
The first decision, common to all sectors, is to clearly identify your 5 to 10 processes without which your organisation cannot function, the systems and data that support them, and the critical dependencies (suppliers, operators, cloud providers, foreign partners).
This targeted mapping, quantified in terms of impact, becomes the foundation of your cyber strategy, your budget decisions and your detection and response priorities.
An AI-driven attack, a ransomware outbreak on your systems, a massive data breach : these are not only technical scenarios, they are governance crises. Running a crisis exercise tailored to your local reality helps to :
After a well-designed exercise, it becomes much easier to justify investments, prioritise certain initiatives and understand why a living SOC is not a luxury but a necessity.
If you already have a SOC – internal, external or shared – three simple questions arise :
If the answer is "not really", it is not necessarily about throwing everything away to buy something else, but about :
This is exactly what AGCG refers to as a living SOC.
It is often said that Africa is lagging behind in cybersecurity. The data mainly show that the continent is increasingly targeted, that losses are rising sharply and that threats are growing more sophisticated, with attacks that are now partially autonomous and driven by AI.
Yet this situation creates a unique opportunity : not to copy-paste heavy, ill-suited models, but to design, from today, more streamlined, more agile and more realistic arrangements, anchored in the realities of African infrastructures, budgets and talent pools.
Innovation in the service of Africa’s digital defence is not about chasing every new technology buzz. It is about clarifying what truly matters, organising defences to handle risk volumes at our scale, and keeping SOCs, processes and partnerships alive – rooted in Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and across the continent.
For its part, AGCG stands alongside African institutions, operators and companies to put numbers on risks, build realistic two- to three-year trajectories, and deploy living SOCs and operational capabilities that deliver visible results in a matter of months, not five years.