The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) is to join Southern and Eastern African countries in a fight against cybercrime through the establishment of a security office.
This comes at a time when cybercrime has been on the increase in Africa hence the decision to have an office to curb the crime.
Speaking at the annual Congress of Association of Regulators of Information and Communications in Eastern and Southern Africa (ARICEA) held in Lilongwe, MACRA deputy director Francis Bisika disclosed that the membership has identified Rwanda to host the cyber security office.
“We are looking to set up a cyber-security office and we have identified Rwanda to host the offices,” said Bisika.
He added that the meeting will also look at international challenges faced by the nineteen member countries under ARICEA.
Cybercrime, or computer related crime, is crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target.
Cybercrimes are offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm, or loss, to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as internet.
While this looks positive, and let’s be honest all those Naija e-mail scams are horrible, in places like South Africa this “cybercrime” operative is being used to repress freedom of speech – i.e. if you make comments online, they try to track you and arrest you for “hate speech”. So Malawi needs to make sure that this is genuine crime they are fighting and not just targeting people because of their beliefs.