ACCRA, GHANA
September 19th 2022

The project “Organised Crime: West African Response on Cybersecurity and the fight against Cybercrime” (OCWAR-C), the ECOWAS Commission, in collaboration with the European Union, proceeds on Monday September 19 2022, with the official handing over of the equipment of the digital investigation laboratory, to the Cyber Crime Unit (CU) & Digital Forensic Laboratory of the Ghana Police Service.

Information and communication technologies have revolutionized the world by enabling the automation of tasks. Information and communication technologies are now essential for sustainable development, creating many socio-economic opportunities. However, they have also created new challenges, notably related to their misuse for criminal purposes. According to several studies, each year cybercrime costs the world economy several hundred thousand billion XOF.

In order to provide an adequate response to the strong growth of cybercrime in its area and to support its member countries, the ECOWAS Commission has initiated the project Organised Crime: West African Response on Cybersecurity and the fight against Cybercrime” (OCWAR-C), which aims to contribute to the reinforcement of cybersecurity and the fight against cybercrime in West Africa. Fully funded by the European Union to the tune of almost 4.9 billion XOF, OCWAR-C targets, among other things, the establishment or renovation of national digital investigation laboratories.
Ghana, one of the beneficiary countries of the project, has remarkably improved its cybersecurity and anti-cybercrime mechanism in all institutional, legal and human aspects. Ghana now has a National Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) and a legislative and regulatory framework to strengthen the cyber security of critical services and infrastructure. In order to strengthen the capacity of its specialized unit in charge of fighting cybercrime, Ghana is the beneficiary of a batch of specific equipment for its Digital Investigation Laboratory.

OCWAR-C and the international technical cooperation agency in charge of its implementation, Expertise France, are working closely with the ECOWAS Commission and the various Ghanaian actors involved in the field.