Mastercard has launched an Africa Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence, a pan-African initiative it said will help financial institutions, government bodies and businesses share threat intelligence and shore up their defences.
A phased roll-out will start this year in South Africa and Nigeria.
The announcement was timed to a visit to both countries by Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach and carried endorsements from President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. Mastercard tied the initiative to commitments made to the South African government during the G20 meetings in Johannesburg last year and to recent talks in Abuja.
Detail on the centre itself is thin. Mastercard described a virtual hub “delivered through connected digital platforms” rather than a physical facility, with no rand value, no named local partners and no staffing figures attached.
Its first-year offering centres on a cyber-risk analysis covering up to 50 organisations and an Africa-focused threat-intelligence feed from Recorded Future – a US$2.65-billion threat intelligence firm Mastercard bought in December 2024. Collaboration among security chiefs, joint exercises and resilience assessments make up the rest.
Proving ground
The centre is another step in Mastercard’s expansion from a card payments network into security and intelligence services – capabilities it increasingly sells alongside the transactions it already processes, with one of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies as the proving ground.
Mastercard said it has invested more than $12.6-billion in cybersecurity since 2018, a figure it did not break down.
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On the threat picture, Mastercard said South Africa is the continent’s most-targeted market, accounting for about 29% of ransomware attacks and 40% of phishing incidents in Africa, with only an estimated 35% of incidents reported. It put Africa’s digital economy on course to reach $1.5-trillion by 2030.
Interpol’s 2025 Africa Cyberthreat Assessment, drawing on Trend Micro figures, recorded more ransomware detections in South Africa than any other African country – 17 849, ahead of Egypt’s 12 281 – and found phishing made up about a third of reported incidents continent-wide. Interpol estimated cumulative cybercrime losses across Africa topped $3-billion between 2019 and 2025.
For Mastercard, the argument is that trust underpins digital growth. It also, increasingly, sells trust. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media