A new pan-African cybersecurity initiative, the International Cybersecurity Community for Africa (ICCA), has launched in Kigali, Rwanda, aiming to strengthen the continent’s cyber resilience through collaboration, skills development, and innovation.
The initiative comes as African organisations face an average of 1,848 cyberattacks per week, while the continent grapples with a severe talent gap—fewer than 300,000 cybersecurity professionals against millions of unfilled roles globally. ICCA has set an ambitious target to train one million cybersecurity specialists by 2030.
ICCA plans to roll out certification programmes and introduce an African Cyber Resilience Index to benchmark national preparedness. It is also developing practical tools such as a threat intelligence platform to detect compromised credentials and a Capture-the-Flag system to simulate real-world cyberattacks for training.
With Rwanda as its central hub, the initiative aims to expand to 15 African countries by 2027, fostering a unified, collaborative cybersecurity ecosystem across the continent.
