South Africa’s Taxi Industry as a Cybersecurity-Awareness Game Changer: Why and How?

The South African economy is not only the second largest in Africa, but it is also the most diversified, industrialized and technologically advanced on the continent. This technological advance is evidenced by its citizenry’s comparatively high-level of digital connectivity and interconnectedness. On the reverse side, South Africa (SA) has the third highest number of cybercrime victims internationally. Maintaining and expanding its competitive technological advantage requires of South Africa to have a robust national cybersecurity endeavour. This needs to include an innovative, high-impact cybersecurity awareness campaign that effectively reaches a diverse population. This paper’s primary aim is to propose such a high-impact drive, namely a broad-based national cybersecurity awareness campaign that levers the South African minibus taxi industry. The paper’s three objectives pertain to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of such a campaign. The paper’s first objective is to substantiate the need for a broad-based cybersecurity awareness campaign (in short: why is it needed?). The second objective is to substantiate why the taxi industry constitutes an optimal platform for a game changing campaign. Thirdly, the paper advances a proposition on a Taxi Industry Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign (TICAC) (i.e. how can the taxi industry be a game changer?). We qualify the TICAC as a tentative, high-level conceptual proposition subject to much further research on the theoretical/academic and practical levels. It is hoped that the paper would be of value to also other countries – developed and developing – in utilising private and/or public transport industries as platforms for cybersecurity awareness initiatives.