COTONOU, BENIN
October 12th 2022

Benin takes the first place.

The ECOWAS Commission through the OCWAR-C project funded by the European Union, in collaboration with the Benin Computer Security Incident Response Team (bjCSIRT) of the Information Systems Agency (ASIN), proceeded this Wednesday, October 12, 2022 in Cotonou, Benin, to the closing of the Final of the ECOWAS HACKERLAB 2022 contest with the theme “ECOWAS Youth Engaged Against Cyber Threats”.
This regional final which brought together eleven (11) ECOWAS Member States and Mauritania saw the victory of Team Benin after 48 hours of uninterrupted competition. Team Nigeria and Mauritania came second and third respectively.

These three best teams and the best participant of the competition received monetary gifts and certifications to pursue their passion in the field of cyber security.
The closing ceremony was marked by three (3) speeches, including that of Mr. Ouanilo MEDEGAN FAGLA, Director of the Digital Security Pole of the Information Systems and Digital Agency of Benin, who congratulated the presence of women in this competition and indicated that the Hackerlab shows that there are local skills in the fight against the cyber threat and encouraged the practice of ‘ethical hackers’.

H.E. Sédiko DOUKA, ECOWAS Commissioner for Infrastructure, Energy and Digitalisation, said: “The constitution of a sufficient human resource, but especially of quality in the various fields of cybersecurity is a major concern for ECOWAS. It is with this in mind that the Commission has adopted the regional strategy for cybersecurity and the fight against cybercrime, one of the important pillars of which is the sustained development of cybersecurity skills. The ECOWAS Hackerlab is an undeniable contribution to increasing the cyber workforce in our community space. He then warmly congratulated the winners and all those who participated in this first edition of ECOWAS Hackerlab 2022.

Mr. DATONDJI Gaspard, Secretary General of the Ministry of Digital Affairs and Digitalisation, representing the Minister of Digital Affairs and Digitalisation, said that the participants are sub-regional talents called to be leaders in digital security in the West African sub-region and congratulated the participants, the winners and the organisers of this event.