“Cybersecurity Must Be Built Into Africa’s Digital Transformation” — Babel Balsomi, Cybersecurity Expert
Publish Date: 2026-05-23 14:19:00
Source Domain: www.wearetech.africa
On Sunday, May 3, Côte d’Ivoire’s official government website published an interview with Stéphane Kounandi Coulibaly, Director of Innovation, Startups and the Private Sector at the Ministry of Digital Transition. In the interview, he outlined the country’s ambition to become a regional innovation hub. Yet significant challenges remain, particularly in cybersecurity. In that context, We Are Tech Africa spoke with Babel Balsomi (pictured), an ethical hacker, AI researcher and CEO of Hiero Digital, to examine some of the key issues.
We Are Tech Africa: Ivorian authorities have stepped up their cybersecurity ambitions with the creation of the National Agency for Information Systems Security (ANSSI) and the launch of a Security Operations Center (SOC). On the ground, do these ambitions match the scale of the vulnerabilities being observed?
Babel Balsomi: The creation of ANSSI is a real structural step forward. Bringing the National Computer Security Incident Response Center (CI-CERT), the Cybercrime Fighting Platform (PLCC), and the Directorate of IT and Digital Forensics (DITT) under a single authority helps address the fragmentation that had weakened the government’s ability to respond quickly to incidents. The political will is clearly there, and that matters.
But there is still a major gap between these institutional ambitions and the reality experienced by businesses and ordinary users. The situation on the ground looks very different.
WAT: How would you assess the cybersecurity posture of SMEs in Côte d’Ivoire today — in terms of infrastructure, practices and awareness among business leaders?
BB: Starting with infrastructure, a large share of the systems supporting Côte d’Ivoire’s digital economy — corporate networks, servers and network equipment — is outdated. During audits at SMEs, including accounting firms, logistics companies and private clinics, I still regularly find servers running Windows Server 2008 or 2012, even though…
