Is it possible to counter terrorism financing using cybersecurity?

The greatest enabler of terrorism activities in East Africa and across the continent is money. With more than 700 million mobile money subscribers, Africa has inadvertently created an ideal environment for terrorism financing.

The Eastern Africa Standby Force (EASF) notes that, like many countries, Uganda’s Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA) has put in place several protocols to track the movement of funds entering and leaving the country.

These measures have created a baseline for identifying suspicious transactions, particularly through banks, where large sums of money are easier to monitor.

According to counter terrorism expert Nyimbi Odero, terrorists increasingly use social media platforms to raise funds by appealing for donations. He explains that they have built digital financing systems that move money through three primary channels:

Telecom companies' tiered-KYC systems. Accounts often require only a phone number to transfer money, enabling terrorists to create "mule farms" and break large sums into small, transferable amounts in order to avoid detection, a tactic known as smurfing.

Interoperability exploits. Instant-payment systems allow the movement of funds between different platforms, which weakens clear audit trails and produces large volumes of transactions that are difficult to track.

The agent network. Millions of cash-in and cash-out agents serve as the physical-digital interface, presenting significant vulnerabilities. These agents are used to aggregate large cash deposits, split them across multiple wallets, and coordinate simultaneous cash-outs through poorly regulated agency banking networks.

The Mobile Money 'fog'

The structure of Digital Financial Services (DFS) is easily manipulated to create a dense and opaque network of transactions designed to defeat traditional monitoring systems.

Terrorists begin by creating high-velocity micro-transactions, sending funds through hundreds of accounts in small amounts, which makes pattern detection extremely difficult.

They also convert mobile money into airtime, bill payments, or merchant services, further complicating the value chain. Complicit agents then re-aggregate the distributed funds through organised cash-out operations.

Nyimbi recommends that African governments adopt multi-layered countermeasure frameworks that include advanced analytics, harmonised regulatory standards across regional blocs such as the East African Community, ECOWAS and SADC, and the establishment of joint cyber investigation teams.

He also stresses the importance of strong public-private collaboration among individuals, companies and governments in order to raise the cost and complexity of the digital terrorism financing ecosystem, making it harder for terrorists to move funds across borders.

Cyber Security Expert