Africa: Report Reveals DDoS As New Dimension of Cyberthreats to Digital Infrastructure in West Africa

NETSCOUT Systems has released its latest global threat intelligence report, which exposed the dangerous trend in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on digital infrastructure across West African countries in the first half of 2025, Nigeria inclusive.

According to the report, countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Mali were most hit within the first six months of 2025, effectively putting the digital infrastructure of these countries under threat.

Côte d’Ivoire suffered through the longest DDoS attack within the region, at an average duration of more than 415 minutes (almost seven hours), followed by Burkina Faso at 356.49 minutes (close to six hours), and then Mali at 336.63 minutes (more than 5.5 hours).

Analysing the report, Regional Director for Africa at NETSCOUT Systems, Bryan Hamman, said the extended attacks demonstrated that West African countries were not just facing frequent onslaughts, they were also enduring hours-long disruptions that put critical services to the test.

“A DDoS that lasts for six or seven hours will most definitely affect service availability in a major way, impacting on user access, revenue loss and reputational damage. The fact is that cybercriminals are not just launching many small or brief attacks; in some places, they are sustaining pressure. This could indicate changes in objectives, such as disruption rather than data theft, hacktivism or even experimentation in testing resilience,” Hamman said.

Giving comparative insights of DDoS attacks across the region, especially between Mali and Nigeria, Hamman said: “Mali not only experienced one of the longest DDoS attacks in West Africa during the first six months of 2025, but it also saw the most incidents. When compared to historically high-volume countries, such as Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea, it’s clear that Mali has seen the fastest growth trajectory in the region – from 115 in the first half of 2024, to 1,637 in the second part of the year, skyrocketing again to a staggering 4,145 in the first half of 2025, more than double Nigeria’s total of 1,844 from January to July this year.”

The report however attributed Mali’s DDoS attacks to the ongoing political instability within the country, and early-stage cybersecurity capacity, in combination with its growing internet penetration.”

According to the report, Nigeria, however, did experience the most complex incidents within the region. The maximum number of vectors observed in a single attack was 23, the highest on the continent, as seen in other African countries such as South Africa, Kenya and Libya.

“Interestingly, while Nigeria’ top industries targeted did include wireless telcos as number one, it uniquely recorded 108 incidents aimed at beauty salons. Commercial banking was placed in fourth spot, while household appliances, electric houseware and consumer electronic merchant wholesalers were listed as eighth position,” the report said.

Giving further details of declines in DDoS incidents in some West African countries, the report explained that in contrast to Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, which experienced protracted ‘slow burn’ attacks, other West African countries saw either lower volumes or a decrease in DDoS activity in the first half of 2025.

“Ghana and Liberia for example, two countries that were highly affected in 2024, saw a significant drop for the first six months of this year. From January to July 2024, Ghana led the West African region in both the frequency and diversity of cyber threats, subjected to a total of 4,753 attacks. This dropped significantly to 917 in the second half of 2024. The country has once more seen a drastic decrease in DDoS attacks of more than 80 per cent, recording just 152 incidents in the first half of 2025.

“Similarly, 1,515 incidents were documented for the first half of 2024 in Liberia, with a slight decline to 1,189 for the latter part of the year. This has dipped again by more than 76 per cent to 280 in first half of 2025, mostly focused on computing infrastructure providers (76) and wireless telcos (74).

Cameroon recorded 449 incidents; a notable decline compared to the previous reporting period of 811,” the report said.

NETSCOUT Systems maps the DDoS landscape through passive, active and reactive vantage points, providing unparalleled visibility into global attack trends.

By This Day.