Ghana recorded GH¢49.5 million direct financial losses through cyber fraud activities between January and June, this year, Dr Albert Antwi-Boasiako, the Director-General, Cyber Security Authority (CSA) has disclosed.
This figure according to him, constituted just a fraction of cases reported to state agencies with the possibility that financial losses of unreported cases could exceed the amount reported so far.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako disclosed this at the media launch of this year's National Cybersecurity Awareness Month in Accra on Sunday.
The month of October has been dedicated as a 'National Cybersecurity Awareness Month' and this year's theme is: "Promoting a culture of digital safety".
It is aimed at creating public awareness and conscientising Ghanaians and organisations on opportunities and threats of the cyberspace and ensuring a meaningful utilisation of the online resources for a safer environment.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako said despite the fact that Ghana had made a lot of progress in creating public awareness on cybersecurity issues, there was the need to intensify awareness creation amongst the youth.
He said the Authority had received 41,285 contacts between October 2019 and July 2023 of complaints from the public on cybercrime and other related activities.
Out of this figure, 41 per cent was online fraud including shopping fraud, romance fraud, online blackmail and identity fraud.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako therefore called for collective and individual responsibility in protecting oneself against digital fraud.
He called on the public to contact the Authority through its toll free line 292 to report any issue concerning online fraud for prompt action.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako also proposed institutional harmonisation and integration of the work of state agencies collating statistics on arrests, prosecutions and convictions of persons involved in cyber fraud.
The CSA boss observed that global digitalisation trends had changed the way businesses conducted business.
Therefore, government was creating opportunities, and enabling interventions for economic growth.
Recent statistics indicates that more than 62 per cent (4.95 billion) of the world's population have access to the internet.
In Ghana, internet penetration has increased exponentially from 2.31 million in 2012 to 17 million users in 2022 representing 53 per cent of the population.
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Dr Antwi-Boasiako said cybersecurity awareness was a global initiative aimed at raising awareness about cybersecurity and promoting best practices for online safety.
Ghana started the National Cybersecurity Awareness in 2017 with the establishment of the National Cyber Security Week which subsequently evolved into a month-long event under the auspices of the then National Cyber Security Secretariat.
According to the Groupe Special Mobile Association (GSMA) Mobile Connectivity Index (MCI) 2023 report, Ghana is ranked 4th in Africa with a score of 51.4 per cent depicting significant progress in connectivity over the past five years.
In the same report, Ghana had a score of 86.69 per cent in Online Security (a key dimension of the index) consistent with the country's score on the ITU's Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI).
