South Africa is recording the highest share of deepfake-driven fraud in Africa, with 22 of cases involving AI-generated impersonation, according to the 2026 Digital Identity Fraud Report by identity verification company Smile ID.
The findings show that nearly nine in ten rejected verification attempts in the region are now linked to AI-assisted impersonation and spoofing during biometric checks.
Fraudsters are no longer focusing on fake documents. Instead, 47 of cases involve no-face-match impersonation, where the person verifying cannot be linked to the claimed identity, suggesting large-scale use of stolen personal information. Another 40 are spoofing attacks designed to defeat liveness detection and facial recognition systems.
