[CAVIE-ACCI] Togo has taken a step that goes beyond conventional approaches to digital skills development. In late August 2026, the National Cybersecurity Agency (ANCy) launched a call for expressions of interest to establish a national pool of cybersecurity professionals that can be identified, assessed and mobilized when needed. The initiative covers a broad range of expertise, including incident detection and response, vulnerability assessment, digital forensics, infrastructure security, cloud security, data protection and cybersecurity research. It comes as cyber threats across Africa become increasingly sophisticated. According to INTERPOL, artificial intelligence (AI) is now linked to 55% of reported cybercrime on the continent. The Togolese initiative therefore raises a broader strategic question: how can a country effectively protect its digital space if it does not have a clear understanding of the human, technical and information resources available to defend it?
Knowing Who Can Respond
The significance of Togo’s initiative lies partly in its response to a challenge that receives less attention than technology itself: the fragmentation of expertise. A 5country may have engineers, researchers, auditors, information security specialists and independent experts without having a consolidated picture of their capabilities. Yet when a major incident occurs, knowing who has the right expertise and can be mobilized quickly becomes a strategic capability.
The ANCy’s proposed pool reflects this broad approach, covering threat prevention, systems protection, incident response, threat intelligence, security audits, digital forensics, risk governance, compliance, training and research. The initiative forms part of Togo’s National Cybersecurity Strategy 2024–2028, which places particular emphasis on strengthening national technical capabilities.
The same principle applies to businesses. As digital dependencies grow, cybersecurity risks increasingly extend beyond the IT department. Technology providers, service partners, sensitive data, critical infrastructure and business relationships can all become potential points of exposure. Knowing the capabilities available within an organization and across its wider ecosystem is therefore becoming part of digital resilience.
Cybersecurity Is Also an Information Challenge
The evolution of the threat makes this increasingly important. INTERPOL has reported growing levels of online fraud, identity theft, social engineering and AI-enabled attacks at a time when digital financial services, e-commerce and connected public services are expanding rapidly across Africa.
Protecting a system can no longer mean simply waiting for an attack and responding to it. Organizations need to monitor emerging signals, understand changing attack methods, track vulnerabilities, identify relevant threat actors and assess how new technologies may alter the threat landscape. This is where cybersecurity increasingly intersects with economic intelligence.
The African Center for Competitive Intelligence (CAVIE) approaches this challenge from the perspective that information is a strategic resource: it must be collected, verified, analyzed and transformed into knowledge that supports decision-making. Applied to cybersecurity, this approach extends protection beyond technical safeguards to include environmental monitoring, risk anticipation and a clear understanding of the resources and actors that can influence an organization’s resilience.
From Available Expertise to Strategic Capability
Togo’s initiative therefore offers a lesson that extends well beyond its borders. Developing cybersecurity professionals is essential; knowing where those professionals are, what they can do and how they can be mobilized is equally important. For governments and businesses alike, digital resilience increasingly depends on a range of assets that must be understood and monitored: infrastructure, technologies, data, partners, skills and threats. Connecting these different streams of information is precisely what gives strategic intelligence its value. As cyberattacks become faster, more sophisticated and increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence, the advantage will not lie solely in the ability to respond after an attack, but in understanding the environment well enough to anticipate where the next vulnerability may emerge. This is precisely where CAVIE contributes: through strategic intelligence, risk analysis and decision support aimed at strengthening the capacity of African organizations to anticipate and act.
The Editorial Staff