Some say that the future is digital. Unfortunately, in Kenya, it seems that the future has already arrived... and it is stealing our passwords.

ICT experts are sounding the alarm: the country is not at all ready to deal with the growing wave of cybercrime, and the reason is as simple as an email scam — there is a lack of professionals capable of defending us.

According to the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), Kenya is among the African countries with the most severe shortage of cybersecurity experts. This gap leaves individuals, businesses and public institutions as exposed as windows without mosquito nets in the rainy season.

ISACA Vice President George Kisaka made this clear during the annual Governance, Risk and Compliance conference in Naivasha:

‘Cyber threats are evolving every day, and we are lagging behind. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, attacks are multiplying: criminals are using the same technologies that are supposed to defend us.’

In short, while hackers are learning to use AI to breach systems, we are still struggling to remember passwords or understand why we shouldn't click on ‘You've won an iPhone!’.

Kisaka proposes a solution that sounds almost obvious, but which no one puts into practice: training young unemployed people — and there is no shortage of them in Africa — through technical and vocational colleges (TVET) to create a new generation of ‘digital soldiers’.

The ISACA association, meanwhile, has already launched training programmes: over 250 students are about to graduate with practical skills in AI, cybersecurity and data protection.

Denish Sadda, Safaricom's director of autonomous data, also warned that AI-driven technologies ‘are opening up new frontiers, but also new pitfalls’.

‘AI brings opportunities and threats together. It is essential that risk professionals ensure data security,’ he said, noting that banks and hospitals are among the most vulnerable targets.

The future, therefore, seems to be written in binary code: either Kenya invests in digital skills and adequate defence policies, or it will remain hostage to the pirates of the new millennium — armed not with machetes, but with algorithms.