Harare- Information, Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services (ICT) minister Tendai Mavetera has warned that criminals are now using Artificial Intelligence to clone voices, fake images and steal millions revealing that cabinet had approved the National AI Charter.

Mavetera delivered a virtual keynote address during the Cyber Conference and Cyberfraud and AI Summit last Wednesday, attnded by representatives from regulatory authorities, law enforcement agencies, captains of industry, representatives of financial services, mining, telecommunications and retail sectors.

She said the summit, which took place at Mountclaire Resort, Nyanga, came at a time when AI is transforming economies but also fuelling cybercrime:

“This transformation offers opportunities to improve productivity, yet criminals are exploiting the same technologies to impersonate trusted individuals, compromise digital identities and defraud citizens and institutions, the thing which is AI versus AI,” Mavetera said.

She revealed the government was seized with the recent wave of WhatsApp hacking where hackers get into people’s accounts because WhatsApp has payment mechanisms linked to banks, Instagram and Facebook.

“What those hackers try to do is to be able to get into accounts of people because they know very well that WhatsApp has got some payment mechanisms… for them to be hacking WhatsApp, they also think that they will be able to get into banks and be able to get money out of people, the minister said.

She said Government is working to make cybersecurity mechanisms “more than ever” effective.

Minister Mavetera warned AI has added a new dimension to deception:

“Voice can be imitated, images fabricated, videos manipulated to suggest that public officials or business leaders have issued instructions that they never gave, even a still picture can be moving and one can seem like they’re talking, they can even clone.”

She listed sectors under attack as
mining, where hackers target systems for procurement, production, payroll, fake invoices and compromised supplier accounts.

Education, massive fraud with fake student identities, academic records, scholarship offers, fraudulent admissions and altered payment instructions exploiting parents.
“Students and parents must be able to verify official communications”, she said.

Another affected sector is Telecoms where “mobile numbers tied to financial life must be protected and retail, “a screenshot of payment notification is insufficient assurance that funds have been received”

She set five practical priorities that is to strengthen cooperation and threat information sharing; improve institutional readiness through tested incident response and recovery; Reinforce security of digital identities and payments; invest in skills, research and responsible AI innovation for Zimbabwean talent and to place public education and protection of citizens at centre

On AI governance, Mavetera announced a major step:
“I’m glad today Cabinet, at the Cabinet Committee on National Development, approved our national AI Charter, so this is already a step in the right direction for us as a government to have regulations and also ethical considerations and governance frameworks especially when it comes to the adoption of artificial intelligence as a country.”

The Charter will create a National Regulatory Digital Committee and an AI Implementation Office.

She said before December the government will also launch Pangolin AI, local datasets reflecting Zimbabwe’s ethical, cultural context.

“The AI Charter will outline how we’re going to implement, at the same time it’s also going to look into governance structure, ethical considerations… as a foundation for us to come up with our AI Act so that at least by the end of next year we have an AI Act.”

She said most of 2026 targets are done ,AI Strategy, regulatory committee selected and undergoing security vetting, to be announced within a week after full Cabinet approval.

The minister thanked the host of the program one, Dr Rukanda and his team for leading the conversation yearly and said government is ready to listen to innovations.

“Our ambition must be a Zimbabwe where citizens transact confidently, businesses innovate securely and public institutions deliver trusted digital services.”