Developing an Original Approach to Decolonising Cybersecurity Knowledge and Practice for African Contexts

Cybersecurity knowledge, frameworks, standards, and tools are predominantly produced by and for wealthy Western technological contexts, creating a decolonial challenge for African practitioners and researchers who must apply foreign frameworks to local conditions without adequate theoretical grounding in African values, governance traditions, and threat ecosystems. This study developed an original theoretical framework for decolonising cybersecurity knowledge and practice for African contexts, with empirical grounding in Nigerian cybersecurity. A decolonial theory-building methodology was employed: systematic review of decolonial cybersecurity scholarship (29 publications from 2018 to 2024, predominantly theoretical), structured interviews with 40 Nigerian cybersecurity practitioners, academics, and government officials exploring experiences of framework inadequacy, and expert validation with 22 African cybersecurity scholars. The systematic review confirmed that decolonial cybersecurity theory is nascent and dominated by critique without constructive alternative framework development. Primary research identified five dimensions of epistemological inadequacy in current frameworks: technological assumption mismatch (frameworks assuming always-on connectivity absent in Nigerian contexts), threat actor misrepresentation (Nigerian-specific threat actors inadequately characterised), cultural security value mismatch (Western individualistic privacy frames misaligning with African communal data norms), regulatory gap (frameworks assuming regulatory environments absent in Nigeria), and human capacity mismatch (frameworks requiring specialist roles unavailable in Nigerian organisations). The original Afrocentric Cybersecurity Framework addresses each dimension. Expert review confirmed the framework's original and significant contribution to decolonial technology studies.

Keywords: decolonial cybersecurity, African cybersecurity, indigenous knowledge, Nigeria, epistemological framework