Africa enters high-skill fraud era as deepfakes surge 967% in Zambia, 367% in DRC

Africa’s digital economy is entering a new and more perilous phase as fraudsters abandon low-effort schemes for advanced, AI-driven tactics, with deepfake-based attacks recording explosive growth across several countries.

According to the newly released Sumsub Identity Fraud Report 2025–2026, Zambia witnessed an astonishing 967% surge in deepfake attempts, the highest on the continent, while the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) followed closely with 367 percenr, signalling an emerging era of high-skill fraud powered by synthetic media and automated deception tools.

The report paints a picture of a continent undergoing rapid digital transformation, where mobile money adoption, fintech expansion and e-government services are flourishing, but so is digital crime.

Read also: Nigeria faces surge in bank fraud as industry experts warn of outdated security controls

“AI reshapes both offence and defence. Attackers gain deepfakes, synthetic IDs and autonomous fraud agents; defenders gain self-learning systems and millisecond anomaly detection,” says Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, head of AI/ML at Sumsub.

What was once a battlefield dominated by low-tier scammers has now evolved into a high-skill arena where fraudsters deploy AI-generated identities, voice clones, liveness bypasses and multi-step attack chains. Sumsub describes this shift as a Sophistication Shift, a structural transformation in how fraud is executed across the continent.

While overall fraud rates are declining in some major markets, deepfake usage is rising at unprecedented speed. Malawi recorded a 325 increase, Tanzania 317 percent, and Kenya now sees deepfakes making up nearly 10 percent of all fraud attempts. Across Africa, nearly one in five people have been directly targeted by deepfake attacks, while 24 percent of respondents say they cannot reliably distinguish real from AI-generated content.

“Fraudsters are moving from high-volume, low-effort scams to highly targeted, AI-driven operations. Africa’s story is not only about exposure, it is about resilience, innovation, and a shared commitment to building digital trust from the ground up,” notes Hannes Bezuidenhout, Sumsub VP for sales Africa.

The report identifies a divergence between rising and declining fraud markets.

Read also: Fraud prevention vs. whistleblowing policy: A call for institutional courage

For instance, Mali (+131 percent YoY), Côte d’Ivoire (+51 percent), Malawi (+49 percent), Cameroon (+18 percent) and Senegal (+28 percent) recorded surges in fraud rates, fuelled by weak verification systems and growing access to AI tools.

Conversely, Nigeria recorded a 54 percent drop, the largest on the continent, driven by stricter NIN–SIM enforcement and aggressive cybercrime crackdowns. South Africa, Kenya and Algeria also saw double-digit declines in overall fraud.

But even in countries making progress, the threat is becoming more complex. South Africa, for instance, recorded a 269 percent rise in deepfake incidents, despite improved fraud detection frameworks.

Sumsub’s survey also found that 92 percent of African consumers now insist on strong anti-fraud measures before trusting a service provider. Phishing (57 percent) and social engineering (38 percent) remain the most common attacks, often leading to account takeovers and financial theft.

Meanwhile, businesses report growing levels of first-party and third-party fraud, with 87.5 percent agreeing that fraud is becoming more AI-driven, and 76 percent reporting more frequent organised fraud attempts.

Read also: Deepfake fraud losses soar to $1.56bn as cheap AI tools fuel global crime wave

The report warns that 2026 will mark the rise of autonomous fraud agents capable of forging synthetic identities, probing systems for vulnerabilities and imitating user behaviour at scale.

As digital assistants begin executing transactions on behalf of humans, identity verification will shift towards validating not only the user but also the AI agents acting on their behalf.

“Verification is entering a new phase. Next year’s breakthroughs won’t come from better document scanning, but from AI agents verifying other AI agents,” says Sumsub CTO Vyacheslav Zholudev.

Royal Ibeh is a senior journalist with years of experience reporting on Nigeria’s technology and health sectors. She currently covers the Technology and Health beats for BusinessDay newspaper, where she writes in-depth stories on digital innovation, telecom infrastructure, healthcare systems, and public health policies.

Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date