👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Less money, more problems

Only 29% of South African organisations will increase cybersecurity budget in 2025

What is the answer to a wave of cyberattacks that affected South Africa’s biggest institutions in 2024?

Apparently, not a bigger cybersecurity budget. In the last three years, South African organisations—including big corporations and government parastatals—have lost up to $20 million to damning cyberattacks and data breaches.

This year, the country was ranked as one of the most-affected countries in Africa, dealing with more than 1,876 recorded cases in Q3 2024 alone.

Government arms like the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) and the National Health Laboratory Services suffered breaches.

Despite these headline-grabbing cyberattacks, only 29% of South African organisations plan to increase their cybersecurity budget by 2025, according to consulting firm PwC.

The disconnect is striking. Cybercriminals are sharpening their hunting instincts and shooting faster than these organisations can fly. Some of them are forming hacktivist and syndicate groups to attack and share companies’ data among themselves or sell the information for cheap.

Large South African organisations that are getting minimal budget lifts could mean one of two things: they have either implemented top cybersecurity policies and only consolidation remains, which likely explains the minimal spend. Or, they are de-prioritising a channel that was a leaky pipe for them in 2024.

If the latter is the case, then the rhetoric here is whether South Africa’s biggest organisations are irrationally optimistic about the threats.

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The Nigerian government plans to introduce a ₦198 billion ($1.2 million) syndicated loan fund to boost Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country. The goal is to improve access to affordable credit for MSMEs that are often overlooked for venture funding.

Starting in Q1 2025, the initiative will offer loans—up to ₦400,000 ($289)—with a 9% interest rate, a five-year tenure, and a one-year moratorium, enabling businesses to grow and innovate sustainably. 

This is a relief for MSMEs which, unlike tech startups, have limited access to funding and capital to expand their businesses. 

MSMEs have loans and grants. Tech startups have venture capital. The rationale is not hard to see. VCs want outsized returns and there is often pressure to pick wide-margin winners. High-growth tech startups, unlike MSMEs, characterise these ventures that can hit a wider market—as a result of their underlying tech-enabled services—and scale quickly.

VCs have also voiced their preference for tech companies due to their globalisation, which again, exposes them to a wide market that increases their chances of attracting high-value customers that move the business.

On the other hand, MSMEs are the mundane, usually “non-tech” ventures that lack that same global application. They are not usually VC darlings because they cannot sell to the entire country at the same time.

MSMEs may not be the hyper-scale, exponential growth startups that VCs love, but they contribute significantly to Nigeria’s economy. Their positioning and closeness to low-end users makes it easy for them to sell much-needed, everyday consumer goods.

But MSMEs have typically lacked access to credit and loan facilities. Instead, tech startups and microfinance banks have since stepped up to close this funding gap for MSMEs.

With the government’s backing, this loan fund for MSMEs could position the informal sector to become a driver of economic growth, closing the funding gap in the often-overlooked area.

After years of an on-again, off-again relationship, Tiktok, the popular social media app owned by China’s ByteDance, and the US could part ways in 2025. On December 6, TikTok lost a federal court appeal after a passed legislation stated it must either resell its app to a non-Chinese, government-approved buyer in the US, or face a ban.

If you’re not aware of the fuss, the US Congress has long accused TikTok of siding with the “Chinese state” due to its ByteDance ownership and affiliation with China. US president-elect Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to ban the app in his first tenure. 

The US has also been wary of how TikTok collects and stores user data, fearing that it could use it to influence over 170 million Americans. A major concern is that TikTok stores data of some American users in China, where it can be accessed by the Chinese government. 

This escalated when former ByteDance employees confirmed they could access US users’ accounts. Despite TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifying in Congress in March 2023, and assuring that data safeguards were in place, these explanations failed to ease lawmakers’ fears. 

TikTok has countered some of the allegations, saying that it is incorporated in Delaware and California which subjects it to the US laws. It has also denied claims that a government entity owns a controlling share in ByteDance.

But the short-form video company’s global reputation isn’t helping: the app is banned in China, India, and 23 other countries over similar concerns. If the US ban succeeds, that number could go up, including in Africa.

African leaders have, for less cogent reasons, blocked social platforms before. If TikTok falls out of favour in the US, African countries that have developed concerns over the misinformation in the app, could follow suit, leaving businesses and creators dependent on the app scrambling for alternatives.

TikTok has one last plan up its sleeves. It will appeal to the Supreme Court to try and overturn a decision that could have global repercussions for its business.

The World Wide Web3

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* Data as of 06:30 AM WAT, December 9, 2024.