Specialization - 3 course series
This Specialization is designed for post-graduate students aiming to master AI applications in cybersecurity. Through three comprehensive courses, you will explore advanced techniques for detecting and mitigating various cyber threats. The curriculum covers essential topics such as AI-driven fraud prevention, malware analysis, and the implications of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). You will gain hands-on experience in identifying anomalies in network traffic, implementing reinforcement learning techniques for adaptive security measures, and evaluating AI model performance against real-world challenges. By completing this Specialization, you will develop a deep understanding of how to secure AI systems while addressing the complexities of adversarial attacks. This knowledge will prepare you to tackle emerging cybersecurity challenges, making you a valuable asset in the rapidly evolving field of digital security. With a focus on practical applications and industry-relevant skills, you will be well-equipped for a career in AI-driven cybersecurity.
Applied Learning Project
In the "AI for Cybersecurity" specialization, learners will apply AI techniques to develop practical cybersecurity tools. They will create both machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models to detect IoT botnet activity in network traffic, emphasizing feature engineering for ML and optimizing raw data for DL. Additionally, participants will design a metamorphic malware detector using a Hidden Markov Model, analyzing opcode sequences to classify them as malware or legitimate software. Throughout these projects, learners will export models, test them on unseen data, and submit video demonstrations along with their code. This hands-on approach equips learners with skills in AI-driven threat detection and model implementation for real-world cybersecurity challenges.
This is a Coursera course, available through SADA. This course is delivered on Coursera and you complete it there. When you open it, it launches directly into Coursera in a new tab, already signed in for you — no separate account or login needed. It is fully connected and integrated with the SADA platform, and made available to you through SADA's partnership with Coursera. Your learning and completion happen on Coursera.
There are 3 modules in this course
This IBM course will teach you the critical skills needed to manage and investigate cybersecurity incidents. You will learn about key topics, including incident response frameworks (NIST and SANS), digital forensics methodologies, and best practices for handling digital evidence. Through hands-on labs and projects, you’ll gain practical experience in detecting, analyzing, and mitigating cybersecurity threats, as well as conducting forensic investigations using industry-standard tools.
By the end of the course, you will be equipped to implement incident response plans, collect and analyze digital evidence, and report findings to support cybersecurity efforts. This course is ideal for learners looking to strengthen their expertise in digital forensics and incident response, making it an essential component for those aiming to advance in the cybersecurity field.
This is a Coursera course, available through SADA. This course is delivered on Coursera and you complete it there. When you open it, it launches directly into Coursera in a new tab, already signed in for you — no separate account or login needed. It is fully connected and integrated with the SADA platform, and made available to you through SADA's partnership with Coursera. Your learning and completion happen on Coursera.
There are 2 modules in this course
Build the strategic side of cybersecurity — the one that dictates how organizations remain secure, compliant, and resilient. Cybersecurity Governance and Compliance explains the frameworks that give direction to security decisions, the policies that influence behavior, and the risk practices that keep operations up and running.
You’ll learn how to build governance structures, manage security policies, and evaluate risk through identification, analysis, tolerance, appetite, and treatment. BIA and vendor risk management help you understand business-critical dependencies and third-party exposure. You then move into the practical world of compliance: running vendor assessments, using compliance tools, managing privacy and data protection requirements, and strengthening awareness through penetration testing fundamentals, reconnaissance insights, and phishing reporting. If you want to influence security at a strategic level, this course becomes your roadmap. Enroll and advance into a governance-driven cybersecurity role.
This is a Coursera course, available through SADA. This course is delivered on Coursera and you complete it there. When you open it, it launches directly into Coursera in a new tab, already signed in for you — no separate account or login needed. It is fully connected and integrated with the SADA platform, and made available to you through SADA's partnership with Coursera. Your learning and completion happen on Coursera.
Specialization - 3 course series
Vigilance against cyberthreats and attacks becomes increasingly important year over year as we continue to accelerate the amount of sensitive information in digital, web-accessible formats. Do you want to arm yourself with the required knowledge to ensure protection for yourself or your organization? Take this cybersecurity Specialization to learn the basics!
This cybersecurity fundamentals program from IBM can help every individual with limited or no experience in IT or cybersecurity, whether you are a developer, a manager, an IT professional, or a digital consumer interested in learning about issues in the field and the measures you can take to ensure organizational security.
This specialization will equip learners with an understanding of the fundamental concepts, processes, tools, and strategies of cybersecurity, in combination with hands-on exercises and activities, to gain the experience necessary to implement security best practices and take informed decisions in case of a cyberattack.
Investigate topics like authorization, authentication, encryption, firewalls, detection, safety practices, and safe-guarding applications, data, and networks. Explore cybersecurity-related roles and career paths. Get started with your cybersecurity learning today!
Applied Learning Project
This Specialization emphasizes applied learning and includes a series of hands-on activities and projects. In these exercises, you’ll take the theory and skills you’ve gained and practice them with real-world scenarios.
You will explore networking ports and protocols and perform network troubleshooting. You will install Windows updates, anti-virus software, and use Windows Defender firewall. Additionally, manage browser privacy settings and configure a secure network. Regarding cybersecurity-related careers, you will search for job postings with the required skills and qualifications for specific roles and even start to develop your own resume and portfolio.
This is a Coursera course, available through SADA. This course is delivered on Coursera and you complete it there. When you open it, it launches directly into Coursera in a new tab, already signed in for you — no separate account or login needed. It is fully connected and integrated with the SADA platform, and made available to you through SADA's partnership with Coursera. Your learning and completion happen on Coursera.
ECOWAS, in collaboration with Smart Africa through the Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA) WARDIP, is organising a regional capacity-building initiative dedicated to women in cybersecurity, targeting female members of the ECOWAS Information Sharing and Analysis Centre and national CSIRTs. This programme will combine knowledge-sharing, technical training, and experiential learning through a study tour.
Women remain underrepresented in cybersecurity technical and leadership roles, despite being a vital talent pool for strengthening national and regional cyber resilience. Providing access to specialised training, mentorship, networking and exposure to good practices is critical to building a diverse and inclusive workforce.
Programme Dates
- Preparatory Webinar: 11-12 August 2026 (online, 2 hours/day)
- In-Person Training and Study Tour: 17-21 August 2026, Vilnius, Lithuania
Target Participants: Female members of ECOWAS national CSIRTs and the ECOWAS Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC)
Organised by: ECOWAS, in partnership with Smart Africa/SADA WARDIP and the World Bank
Your country may feel sovereign. But is it? Most governments rely on foreign-owned infrastructure for their most critical systems - communications, citizen data, national security. The question isn't whether your country has a digital strategy. It's whether you actually control what runs underneath it.
This opening webinar launches a practitioner programme for cyber authorities, regulators, and senior public sector executives who need to move from understanding digital sovereignty to actually implementing it.
What you will gain:
- A clear picture of where your country actually stands - not where its strategy says it stands
- Identification of your most critical hidden dependencies: infrastructure, jurisdiction, encryption keys
- Understanding of the two threats hitting governments simultaneously: vendor lock-in and the quantum decryption horizon
- A sovereignty gap map and a clear sense of where to act first
Who is this for? Policymakers, regulators, national cybersecurity authorities, and senior public sector executives seeking a clear, actionable path from digital sovereignty principles to operational control.
Delivered by: RealTyme, in partnership with the Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA)
Digital sovereignty is not an IT project. It is the new standard of national autonomy in the digital age.
Welcome to your course on Cybersecurity Economics for Emerging Markets!
This course is designed for government officials, policymakers, and digital-economy leaders across Africa who need to make the case for cybersecurity in budget rooms, not just server rooms. Most cybersecurity efforts fail not because the technology was weak, but because the spending was never framed as an economic decision: too much on rare, exotic threats, too little on the cheap fundamentals, and no way to show what a breach actually costs. An economic lens flips that around. It treats security as an investment with measurable returns, exposes why markets systematically underprovide it, and equips you to design proportionate policy that fits real emerging-market resource constraints.
The curriculum introduces why digital infrastructure creates economic exposure through core concepts including externalities and public goods, then maps how cyber threats are distributed across income groups and why upper-middle-income countries face disproportionate targeting. You will learn to quantify what incidents truly cost using the iceberg model of direct and hidden losses, diagnose the four market failures that suppress private security investment, and evaluate national responses through the five-step policy cycle, drawing on real cases including the Costa Rica 2022 ransomware incident.
By mastering these concepts, you will be equipped to quantify cyber risk in economic terms, identify the market failures that hold back investment, and design proportionate, evidence-based cybersecurity policy suited to your own national context.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Explain how digital infrastructure creates economic vulnerability, using concepts including externalities and public goods.
- Describe the regional distribution of cyber threats and why upper-middle-income countries face disproportionate exposure.
- Quantify the direct and indirect costs of cyber incidents using the iceberg model.
- Identify the four market failures that suppress private cybersecurity investment.
- Evaluate national cybersecurity policy proposals using the five-step policy cycle and economic reasoning from real-world cases.
Who is this course for?
This course is designed for government officials, policymakers, and digital-economy leaders across Africa. It is highly beneficial for individuals who are:
- Responsible for cybersecurity strategy, ICT regulation, or national budget decisions affecting digital infrastructure.
- Building the economic case for security investment or assessing the cost of cyber risk in their sector.
- Development finance professionals and advisers working on digital-economy resilience in emerging markets.
Welcome to your course on Online Fraud Management in the Digital Age!
Cybercrime cost the global economy over USD 8 trillion in 2023, and Africa is no exception: mobile money fraud, phishing campaigns, and ransomware attacks are rising sharply as digital adoption accelerates across the continent. This course equips policymakers, regulators, and public sector leaders with the practical knowledge to detect, prevent, and respond to online fraud in their own contexts.
Across four focused modules you will explore the landscape of online fraud - its techniques, consequences, and warning signs - then move into cybersecurity and data protection practices, structured risk assessment and management, and the detection technologies, education strategies, and legal frameworks that complete a comprehensive fraud response. The course closes with a wrap-up scenario that asks you to design a national fraud prevention action plan.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Identify the main categories of online fraud, social engineering tactics, and malware threats relevant to the African digital context.
- Apply cybersecurity best practices - strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, encryption, and secure communication - to reduce exposure to fraud.
- Analyse and implement a five-step fraud risk assessment and management process within a public institution or financial organisation.
- Evaluate detection technologies, education and awareness strategies, and the legal and regulatory frameworks required for an effective national fraud response.
Who is this course for?
This course is designed for government officials, regulators, ministry ICT staff, financial sector supervisors, and public sector managers across Africa. It is especially relevant for individuals who are:
- Responsible for cybersecurity policy, consumer protection, or digital financial services oversight.
- Developing national or institutional fraud prevention frameworks and response protocols.
- Seeking to align fraud management practices with continental instruments such as the Malabo Convention and national data protection legislation.
Welcome to your course on Continental Cybersecurity: Implementation, Management and Capacity Development!
This course dives deeper into how to put cybersecurity into practice across Africa, moving from policy and principle to implementation, day-to-day management, and the capacity a country needs to sustain it. It is essential for African policymakers and professionals responsible for operationalising cybersecurity in a context of rapid digitalization and escalating threats.
The curriculum begins with the Zero Trust Network model (never trust, always verify; assume breach; least-privileged access) and how to achieve it through firewall, VPN, IDPS, cryptography and cloud-networking practices. You will then learn to manage incidents and disasters using CERTs, CSIRTs and SOCs, contingency planning, incident response and recovery, and business continuity and crisis management. The course then turns to securing Critical Information Infrastructure (CII), and closes with cybersecurity capacity development and the protection of children online.
By mastering these concepts, you will be equipped to implement, manage and sustain a resilient cybersecurity programme tailored to your own national context.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Apply Zero Trust Network principles, never trust always verify, assume breach, and least-privileged access, to strengthen an organisation's security posture.
- Design incident response, contingency, disaster recovery and business continuity plans appropriate to your national context.
- Evaluate strategies to identify, classify, protect and manage Critical Information Infrastructure (CII).
- Recommend policies for cybersecurity capacity development, including workforce training and gender inclusion, and for protecting children online.
Who is this course for?
This course is specifically designed for policymakers, public servants, regulators, and cybersecurity professionals across African nations. It is highly beneficial for individuals who are:
- Responsible for implementing or managing national cybersecurity strategy, operations, or legislation.
- Leading or advising on incident response, Critical Information Infrastructure protection, or capacity-development programmes.
- Seeking to align national frameworks with continental instruments such as the Malabo Convention and the AU Cybersecurity Strategy.
About the Programme
SmartGirlLead empowers the next generation of African young women entrepreneurs, aged 21 to 28, with advanced digital and entrepreneurial skills. Through scholarships, selected participants will undertake an intensive 3-month programme and receive specialised training and certification in Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, and Data Analytics. The programme is designed to enhance employability by equipping young women with industry-relevant skills aligned with the demands of the evolving digital economy.
Eligibility Criteria
- African young woman aged 21–28
- Interest in Cybersecurity, AWS Cloud Computing, AI, or Data Analytics
- Resident of one of the eligible countries: Chad, Congo, Gabon, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Malawi, or South Africa
Pre-Enrollment Process
- Fill in the application form
- Upload your CV
- Upload a motivation letter
- Submit your application
Applications will be reviewed and only successful candidates will be notified.