Kenya has registered tremendous growth in mobile and internet penetrations, with current figures showing that at least 61 per cent of the population have mobile phones and about two in five Kenyans have access to internet, in what has been an exponential growth of users over the past few years. As the country makes these strides, it is equally important to step up measures to counter any vices that crop up with the growing technology, especially cybercrimes.

 With the growth, more efforts are required to develop cyber security and capacity, to tackle cyber risks that could impact the country’s economic and social benefits. There are arrays of cyber threats facing Kenya, and more work should be done to identify and mitigate these risks. 

 Kenya’s unique mobile penetration is the highest in the region, ahead of Zambia (58 per cent), Tanzania (54 per cent), Nigeria (47 per cent), Uganda (43per cent) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (43per cent). Moreover, with internet penetration rate standing at 42per cent, Kenya is one of the top ten African countries that have the greatest number of internet users in the list that includes Nigeria (51per cent), Egypt (72per cent), South Africa (68per cent), Morocco (84per cent), Algeria (61per cent) and Ghana (53per cent).

 This is good progress and already, as has been noted, benefits that come with this are enormous; from economically empowering users by way of deepening financial inclusion, to social functions like helping in education and information sharing.  For example, with mobile phones, a farmer is able to easily get market information and can negotiate for a fair price for their produce from a point of knowledge, unlike in the past where they were almost exclusively at the mercy of unscrupulous middlemen due to information vacuum.

 Perhaps most importantly, mobile phones and internet have been crucial in boosting financial inclusion through the increased uptake of mobile and internet banking, which has not only boosted the saving culture but also eased payment services, among other advantages.

 Successive governments in Kenya have over the years rolled out plans to ensure that Kenya realizes its digital economy potential. Increasingly, there has been deployment and adoption of e-government, e-health, e-commerce services that are making life easier for millions of Kenyans. Such great development strides call for security measures to promote trust in the e-services, online transactions and critical information infrastructure. 

 We are already alive to the growing number of fraudsters who are using all sorts of tricks to fleece unsuspecting people of their hard-earned money. The effort to track down such criminals should also go hand in hand with education of the masses about cybercrimes to limit the number of victims to such characters such that we do not undo the gains made.  A cyber-attack or an outage affecting infrastructures could have disastrous effects on the Kenyan population. Identifying these critical components and capacity building are important for ensuring their availability and avoiding repercussions on the life of Kenyans in the face of an attack.

 It is gratifying that the Government, through its various departments and bodies, is taking positive steps to ensure cyber security.  However, Government on its own cannot fulfil the mission of making Kenya secure from cyber-attacks and threats. There is need to acknowledge the importance of collaboration in the management of cybersecurity – collaboration and support from different players is critical. 

— The writer is a Public Policy Analyst