ADF STAFF
With cybercrime growing rapidly across Africa, the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) plans to launch a Directorate of Cyber and Electronic Warfare Operations to protect the nation’s military from cyberattacks and to expand the country’s ability to detect and shut down online crime.
The GAF is part of Ghana’s Joint Cybersecurity Committee, created in 2020 to identify and respond to cyber threats.
Ghana ranks among the top countries in Africa for cybersecurity. It is one of only 14 countries to sign the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection. The International Telecommunication Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index ranks Ghana third behind Mauritius and Tanzania in its capacity to protect internet users’ data and thwart security breaches.
Despite that, the Bank of Ghana estimates that online fraud cost Ghanaians more than $4 million in direct financial losses in the first half of 2023. Ghana has more than 23 million internet users, meaning 68% of the population is online. A decade earlier, 2.3 million Ghanaians were online, according to the country’s Cyber Security Authority.
In announcing the new program at Burma Camp in Accra, Vice Adm. Seth Amoama, GAF chief of defense staff, pointed out that security in cyberspace has become as vital to national defense as security on land, sea, air and space.
“We have a responsibility to protect our data, database, network, communications infrastructure and other assets of the GAF,” Amoama said, reported the Ghanaian Times. He added that improving cyber awareness among security professionals is a top priority.
“As we take steps to protect our critical information infrastructure, we want to assure all that efforts are being made for members of the GAF to understand the cyber threats vulnerabilities, and their impact on mission readiness,” he said.