Garoua: ANTIC drills magistrates, law officers on tracking cybercriminals.

This is at a three-day awareness raising seminar organised in Garoua for Magistrates of the North Regional Court of Appeal and law enforcement officers serving in the North Region. 

The training, which started Wednesday August 21, ends today. 

It was officially opened by the Head of Division for Studies and ICT Development at ANTIC, Bouba Djama’a, representing the  Director General of the institution, Prof Ebot Ebot Enaw.

Addressing participants at the workshop, the representative of ANTIC DG said the annual get-together seeks to provide a platform for the judiciary to be drilled on Cameroon’s ICT ecosystem with focus on ANTIC’s mission of securing the national cyberspace.

While mentioning that Information and Communication Technologies, ICTs, have emerged in recent years as key drivers of socio-economic growth, transforming all sectors of the economy, Bouba Djama’a regretted the surge in cyber criminality.

The increase in crimes committed on the cyber space, he said, is as a result of the fact that unscrupulous individuals do exploit security flaws inherent in information systems for malicious purposes. 

“In recent past, cybercrime was considered as an offence carried out by isolated individuals, but today, it has emerged as a malpractice carried out by well-coordinated and well-equipped ingenious criminal gangs,” the ANTIC Director General's representative stated.

He went on to mention that scamming, phishing and identity theft are common cybercrimes that are recurrent in the country’s cyberspace.

“…scamming represented about 52% of cybercrime cases recorded in 2023, with losses estimated at 1.1 billion FCFA in 2023,” he said.

He also disclosed that last year, ANTIC detected over 240 cases of identity theft, amounting to a colossal financial loss of over 22 million FCFA.

“Thanks to the existing collaboration between ANTIC and META, about 7,000 accounts have been closed down of the 10,000 cases detected,” he revealed.

Why involve magistrates, law enforcement officers?

The representative of ANTIC boss, said with the ever-changing nature of cybercrime, they are obliged to build a cybersecurity culture that leverages permanent awareness-raising, as well as continuous training of actors of the cybersecurity chain.

He underlined the key role of magistrates and law enforcement officers, whom he said “have the mandate to investigate, track and prosecute cybercriminals”.

Bouba Djama’a said magistrates are key players in the fight against cybercrime in the sense that the final decisions in a criminal case rest with them and the quality of their decisions have a direct bearing on the work they do at ANTIC.

“To be effective in the discharge of their duties, it is imperative for magistrates to have a good understanding of the different types of cybercrimes perpetrated in our cyberspace, their rankings in terms of prevalence, impact and associated risk, the tools and technologies used to fight these crimes, thus the objective of this current seminar,” he said. 

He went on to disclose that the volume of requests for the authentication of different forms of electronic communication, the likes of WhatsApp, SMS and emails speaks to the importance the judiciary attaches to the work of ANTIC. 

ANTIC’s approach in combatting cybercrime is building partnerships with key stakeholder groups through capacity building and awareness raising seminars.

Issues under disccusion

Some of the themes that are being disccused during the Garoua seminar are cybercrime and cybersecurity – a global perspective, digital evidence gathering, child online protection, social media security and personal data management, digital evidence typology and domain name litigation.

Bouba Djama’a expressed the fervent hope to see existing collaboration ties between ANTIC and the judiciary in the fight against cybercrime strengthened through the seminar. 

To him, contributing to significantly safer and more resilient cyberspace in Cameroon is of outmost importance to ANTIC.

He assured of ANTIC’s availability, support and prompt response whenever solicited with regard to the authentication of electronic communications, digital forensics and geolocalisation of cybercriminals.

Enter Justice Minister’s representative

Speaking at the start of the seminar, the State Attorney at the North Regional Court of Appeal who representated the Minister of State, Minister of Justice, Laurent Esso, saluted ANTIC for the initiative to build the capacities of magistrates and police officers on issues surrouding cybercrimes.

To him, the seminar was a “framework for mutually beneficial exchanges making it possible to harmonise the interpretation and understanding the issues related to cybercrime”.

He thus called on the participants to actively participate in the work with “application and diligence”.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3207 of Friday August 23, 2025