Mastercard expands cybersecurity push in Africa

By Milan Rojan

Mastercard has launched an Africa Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence aimed at strengthening cyber resilience and supporting the secure growth of the continent’s expanding digital economy.

The initiative has been designed as a pan-African platform to enhance collaboration between financial institutions, public sector organisations and industry stakeholders, with the objective of improving preparedness against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. It has been positioned as part of Mastercard’s broader efforts to reinforce trust in digital financial ecosystems as adoption of online banking, digital payments and FinTech services has accelerated across Africa.

The centre has been developed to support knowledge sharing, threat intelligence exchange and capability building across markets, while also enabling organisations to respond more effectively to emerging cyber risks. It has been structured to bring together expertise from across the cybersecurity ecosystem in order to improve collective defence mechanisms and strengthen operational resilience.

Cybersecurity has been identified as a critical enabler of digital transformation, particularly as financial services and commerce have become more digitised across the region. The initiative has been introduced to address challenges linked to fraud, data breaches and evolving attack vectors, which have increased in scale alongside the rapid growth of digital financial services.

Mastercard has indicated that the programme has been intended to complement existing cybersecurity investments and partnerships across Africa, while also supporting broader economic development goals. It has been aligned with efforts to build safer, more inclusive digital infrastructure that can support long-term innovation and financial access.

Industry stakeholders have highlighted that collaboration has become essential in addressing systemic cyber risks, given that threats have increasingly crossed institutional and geographic boundaries. The launch has therefore been positioned as a step towards strengthening shared resilience and enabling more secure participation in the digital economy.

As digital ecosystems have continued to expand, cybersecurity capability has remained central to sustaining trust, with initiatives such as this reinforcing the importance of coordinated, cross-sector defence frameworks across financial services and technology-driven markets.