White Paper 2026

Securing Africa's Digital Backbone

Post-Quantum Readiness for the Continent's Networks, Data, and Institutions

Published: 2026 | Founding document of the AQCSA

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About This White Paper

Cryptography protects every payment, health record, national ID, and government network on the continent. The public-key schemes doing that work today were not built to survive a cryptographically relevant quantum computer — and encrypted traffic captured now can be stored and decrypted later, once one exists. This paper sets out what that means for African networks and institutions, and what has to happen before it becomes urgent.

It is the founding document of the Pan-African Quantum Communications and Security Alliance (AQCSA).

Key Highlights

  • The Threat Model: Harvest-now-decrypt-later exposure, and which African data holds value long enough to matter
  • Standards: The published post-quantum algorithms, and what migration actually demands of operators and regulators
  • Maturity Ladder (Appendix A): The stages of readiness, and the procurement valley where pilots stall before deployment
  • Roundtable Synthesis (Appendix B): What practitioners across the continent said the blockers are
  • The Alliance: The case for coordinated continental action rather than 54 separate migrations

Written for regulators, telecom and financial-sector operators, national CERTs, procurement officers, and the researchers advising them. Free to read, cite, and circulate.

GB English
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