Every bank app, mobile wallet and digital ID in Africa needs people to guard it. Five women, from Lagos to Kampala to Johannesburg, are among the sharpest defenders on the continent.
Africa’s digital economy is growing fast, and attackers follow the money. Defending it takes engineers, regulators, bank chiefs and teachers. This deep dive profiles five women who do that work in different ways. Confidence Staveley trains thousands of people. Celia Mantshiyane protects one of South Africa’s biggest banks. Doreen Mokoena built her own firm. Chinenye Chizea guarded Nigeria’s national ID system. Catherine Bwire guards a major Ugandan bank. Their paths show how many doors the field has.
A word on the list first. There is no official ranking of the “top” women in African cyber defence. Awards and lists differ, and many strong leaders appear on none of them. This is our pick of five women with public work in different parts of the field and the continent. It is a start, not the last word.
| Name | Country | Role | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confidence Staveley | Nigeria | Founder, CyberSafe | Training Africans in cyber skills. |
| Celia Mantshiyane | South Africa | Group CISO, FirstRand | Guarding a major bank. |
| Doreen Mokoena | South Africa | CEO, Cybersec Clinique | Building a firm for mines and more. |
| Chinenye Chizea | Nigeria | Privacy adviser | First woman CISO at Nigeria’s ID agency. |
| Catherine Bwire | Uganda | Head of cyber defence, Ecobank Uganda | From student intern to bank chief. |
Start with Confidence Staveley of Nigeria. She founded the CyberSafe Foundation in 2019. This non-profit builds cyber and AI skills in communities that are often left out. She also founded MerkleFence, an app-safety firm. Her career began far from cyber. She worked in IT for a state government and in customer service at a bank first. The honours followed. She was named Cyber Security Woman of the Year in 2021, and she received the ISC2 Global Achievement Award in 2023. She was inducted into the Forbes Technology Council in 2022, and reports describe her as the first Nigerian woman to join it. She also wrote a book on API safety for ethical hackers.
Her reach comes from scale. In 2021, CyberSafe worked with the Central Bank of Nigeria on awareness, including a handbook and a song campaign. In 2022 it launched a Digital Access Programme with the UK Government. Its aim was to narrow the digital skills gap for women. A later UK-funded effort, DigiGirls, was reported in March 2024 to have reached more than 65,000 women and girls. Other women in the field call her a role model. Doreen Mokoena is one of them.
Next is Celia Mantshiyane of South Africa. She is Group Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at FirstRand, a post she has held since 2024. Before that she was CISO at MTN South Africa, from 2022 to 2024. From 2019 to 2022 she was Group CISO at Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. Earlier she held senior posts at Sasria, a South African insurer. Her profile lists an MBA from GIBS Business School and a string of top certificates, including CISA and CISM.
Her style puts people first. Her profile says she applies global standards such as ISO, PCI DSS and NIST at scale. It also says she backs AI and machine learning to defend networks. She is a strong voice on mentoring. “I have been mentored by men in this environment,” she told Telecom Review Africa in 2023. “Hence, it’s quite important to have women leaders to mentor young girls.” She is a finalist for the 2026 Wired4Women CISO of the Year award, with four other South African leaders.
Doreen Mokoena of South Africa took the founder’s road. She started Cybersec Clinique in 2020 and is its CEO. The firm offers database protection, threat modelling, managed services and virtual CISO help. Its clients include mines, a vital sector in South Africa. She sits on the board of ISPA, the internet providers’ association. She has also stood as a candidate for ICANN’s board. ICANN runs the internet’s naming system. She leads Women in Cybersecurity in Lesotho and works with universities on cyber courses.
Her view is plain: people are the weak spot, so train them. In a 2024 interview she said staff remain “the weakest link.” She added that every team member must grasp cyber culture. She wants to build an operations centre for under-served towns, hospitals and schools. She also hopes to write a children’s storybook on online grooming and unsafe content. In 2022, the Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders named Cybersec Clinique its Entrepreneurship Education of the Year.
Chinenye Chizea of Nigeria worked on the other side of the table: the state. BusinessDay calls her the first female CISO of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), which runs Nigeria’s national ID. She now advises the World Bank and the federal government on privacy and safety for the ID4D digital ID project. She has more than 20 years in cyber defence, IT, privacy and compliance. Digital ID is a big deal. Banks, telcos and fintechs lean on it to check who their customers are. If ID data leaks, the harm spreads far and fast. People like Chizea guard that base layer.
Catherine Bwire of Uganda shows how far grit can go. She heads information security at Ecobank Uganda and has more than 15 years in IT, mostly in banking. She grew up in Kampala, the eldest of five children. She earned first-class honours in IT from Uganda Christian University. While still a student, she took her results to Hima Cement and talked her way into an internship, which turned into paid work. At Absa Bank, formerly Barclays, she moved from application support to IT controls and governance. When some colleagues doubted the value of the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) credential, she paid for it herself. “I didn’t need permission to believe in myself,” she says. She is a finalist for the 2026 Top 100 Information Security Professionals Award.
Others deserve a mention. Jaqueline Madara Dondo leads ICT at Machakos University in Kenya. She was named among the Top 100 Cybersecurity Women to watch in Africa in 2024. Many more could join this list.
What do the five share? Each links safety to trust. Staveley builds skills so more people can protect themselves. Mantshiyane and Bwire guard the money people keep in banks. Chizea protects the ID data that opens the door to finance. Mokoena brings protection to places that usually go without. All of them mentor, train or speak up for the women coming behind them.
Why it matters: Africa’s fintechs, online shops and digital IDs only work if people trust them. That trust rests on skilled defenders, and the field needs far more of them, including more women. These five show clear routes in: non-profit work, big-firm leadership, starting a company, public service and banking. For startups, the lesson is practical. Build safety in early, hire and mentor widely, and treat protecting users as part of the product.
What to watch next: more women in top cyber roles at banks and telcos. Also watch new programmes that train young women, and the results of this year’s awards.
Sources: BusinessDay on women shaping cybersecurity in Africa; Wikipedia on Confidence Staveley; ITWeb on the 2026 Wired4Women CISO of the Year finalists; ITWeb Brainstorm CISO Banquet 2026, Celia Mantshiyane; Telecom Review Africa on Celia Mantshiyane; iWeek speaker profile, Doreen Mokoena; Telecom Review Africa interview with Doreen Mokoena; Nile Post on Catherine Bwire; AFICTA profile of Jaqueline Madara Dondo.
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