Ghana Leads African Countries Considered ‘Role Models’ in Cybersecurity

The average cost of a data breach has climbed by 15% over the last three years, with over 2 800 documented incidents compromising 8 billion information in 2023. This is according to a report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which explores the cybersecurity level of 193 countries.

The recently released Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) by the ITU, has shifted to a tier-based presentation of country scores, using score ranges set by the GCI Expert Group to give an accurate representation of the strength and weaknesses of each country’s cybersecurity.

Categorized into five tiers, Tier 1 also called ”Role Modeling” represents the highest level of cybersecurity commitment across legal, technical, organizational, capacity-building, and cooperative pillars, with Tier 2 called “Advancing” following, making Tier 5 called “Building”, the lowest levels.

The vast majority of countries (105) were categorized into T3 (Establishing) and T4 (Evolving), signifying multiple countries that have been improving digital services but still need to do more to make sure that cybersecurity is included into their meaningful connectivity goals.

A considerable cyber-capacity gap is present in many of these countries as well. They desire to enhance their cybersecurity but are limited by issues of manpower, equipment availability, and long-term finance.

With that said, here are the 5 African countries ranked under Tier 1 of the GCI.