Interpol's Nexus Upgrade Goes Live Across East African Police Forces

Police officers from 14 East and Central African countries arrived in Mombasa this week for what their commanders described as a landmark moment in regional law enforcement cooperation: the formal adoption of Interpol's Nexus system — a web-based, AI-powered platform that gives investigators access to shared crime databases in near-real-time.

Kenya has been an early adopter, having migrated its National Central Bureau in Nairobi to Nexus six months ago with direct technical assistance from Interpol's Regional Bureau for Eastern Africa. The Mombasa symposium focused on completing the migration of the remaining countries in the region and on establishing protocols for how cross-border intelligence requests will be handled under the new system.

"The old I-24/7 system served us well for 20 years, but criminal networks are not operating on 20-year-old technology," said Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja, who hosted the symposium. "They use encrypted messaging, satellite phones and AI to evade detection. Nexus gives us an equivalent tool."

The system is particularly relevant for three categories of crime that are currently overwhelming East African police forces: cybercrime and digital fraud, cross-border human trafficking, and wildlife poaching networks that span multiple jurisdictions. All three have grown significantly in the past five years as criminal organisations have become more sophisticated and geographically dispersed.

Data protection regulators from several countries raised concerns during the symposium about privacy safeguards in the new system — specifically, about who can access citizen data and under what legal authority. Interpol representatives said Nexus includes audit trails for every data query, a protection the old system did not provide. Several countries including Tanzania and Rwanda said they would require additional domestic legislative changes before full implementation.