ECOWAS cybersecurity training has produced a fresh pool of certified auditors for West Africa’s digital defences.
The three day programme ran in Lomé, Togo, from 4 to 6 August. It brought together 38 professionals from ECOWAS member states and partner institutions, according to a statement from the ECOWAS Commission.
The ECOWAS cybersecurity training, formally called the Certified SIM3 Auditor Training, sat under the Joint Platform for Advancing Cybersecurity, known as JPAC. Germany’s Federal Foreign Office backed the programme. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, or GIZ, implemented it on the ground. The ECOWAS Commission said the exercise was built to strengthen Computer Security Incident Response Teams across the region. It gives those teams auditors who can assess and improve their own readiness.
Instruction for the ECOWAS cybersecurity training came from the Open CSIRT Foundation. Cyber Defense Africa hosted the sessions in the Togolese capital. The firm operates CERT.tg, Togo’s national Computer Emergency Response Team, and is a joint venture between the Togolese government and the Asseco Group. TrustBroker Africa also took part.
Trainees on the ECOWAS cybersecurity training studied the Security Incident Management Maturity Model, widely known as SIM3. The framework is used internationally to judge how well incident response teams perform on operations, organisation and governance. A shared assessment method of this kind builds trust between institutions, the ECOWAS Commission said. It also strengthens collective readiness against threats that pay no attention to national borders.
The ECOWAS cybersecurity training feeds directly into a wider regional system. Graduates will support the ECOWAS Information Sharing and Analysis Centre, a platform set up under JPAC for member states to swap cyber threat intelligence. The Commission noted strong representation from that ISAC community among the trainees. That points to a longer term goal beyond a single workshop in Lomé.
The timing matters. West Africa’s digital infrastructure is under growing pressure. INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 drew on data from 36 member countries and private sector telemetry. It found that reported cyberattack losses across the continent more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, rising from 192 million dollars to 484 million dollars. The documented victim count climbed from 35,000 to 87,000 over the same period. INTERPOL put the true direct economic damage at roughly 5 billion dollars for 2025, against continental cybersecurity spending of 15.3 billion dollars.
Nigeria has already paid a price for gaps in critical infrastructure defences. The Nigeria Customs Service was hit by a ransomware variant in August 2025. The attack paralysed cargo clearance at major ports and generated an estimated 18 million dollars in storage fees and import delays, per INTERPOL’s assessment. Namibia’s national telecommunications provider suffered a separate blow, losing 500,000 personal and financial records after an unsecured administrative portal was left open to the internet.
The Shadowserver Foundation counted more than 6,000 exploitable vulnerabilities across Africa in 2025. South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria carried the heaviest concentrations. That picture explains why ECOWAS cybersecurity training of this kind now sits high on the regional agenda. Analysts at the Atlantic Council have argued for standardised baseline security rules in finance, telecommunications and energy. Such rules would not force identical laws on every country. They would instead create interoperable frameworks that let nations share information and respond together.
The ECOWAS Commission said the Lomé edition of the ECOWAS cybersecurity training also aims to build a sustainable pool of West African trainers. Those trainers could deliver future SIM3 certification courses elsewhere on the continent, cutting reliance on outside expertise over time. Officials described the initiative as one plank in a broader push toward a trusted, resilient and self reliant cybersecurity ecosystem for the region. Further JPAC activities are expected to follow as member states work to close the gap between the scale of the threat and the pace of institutional readiness.
