The Ghana Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has signed a memorandum of understanding with e-Crime Bureau Inc to develop a national investigative response team to deal with the problems of cybercrimes and other electronic-based crimes.
Dubbed the ‘e-Crime Project’, the initiative will help the CID to develop new policing and investigative approach expected to deal with the increasing cybercrime cases in the country.
Launching the project in Accra Ghana, the Director General of the CID, Commissioner of Police Prosper Agblor, said the project would help the police to keep up with the increasing sophistication in the commission of crimes.
It will include training, creation of an e-crime lab for computer-based forensic investigations, the creation of a cyber intelligence unit and the development of a mechanism for effective cybercrime reporting.
The e-Crime project is an important part of Ghana Police Service Strategic Plan that stretches for a period of 5 years. The plan outlines policing roadmap that will see modernization of the CID, including capacity building in e-crime investigations and intelligence gathering.
According to The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2011 report, 2011 marked the third year in a row that the IC3 received more than 300,000 complaints with over $485.3 million reportedly lost to cyber criminals.
Africa is experiencing a boom in Internet services, and this has exposed the Web users to scams and other fraud-related activities. South Africa was ranked number 7 all over the world in the number of individual cased reported in 2011.
