IBIA’s Khalid Ali on Africa: Increased alerts show integrity systems are becoming more effective
Nothing about the drivers of betting-related match-fixing is unique to Africa, on the IBIA’s reading of it. Criminals, it says, look for the same weaknesses wherever they operate: poor governance, financial vulnerability, limited integrity education and inadequate reporting mechanisms.
What the association says sets the continent apart is the pace at which its regulated betting market is developing, and how widely levels of regulatory maturity vary between jurisdictions.
The scale of that development is set out in IBIA’s 2025 Sports Betting Integrity Report, which includes data from H2 Gambling Capital that projects Africa’s total betting gross gambling revenue will grow from $3.5 billion in 2021 to $19.4 billion by 2030. Most of that growth is expected to come from online betting, which is forecast to reach $16.4 billion by 2030, with $13 billion, or 79%, generated onshore.
For Khalid Ali, chief executive of the IBIA, that trajectory is not simply a risk to be managed. “That growth presents an opportunity as much as a challenge,” he says. “Digital, account-based betting generates valuable intelligence that licensed operators can use to identify suspicious activity before it escalates.
“Football remains the dominant betting product, and around 90% of IBIA’s football alerts globally involve customer accounts located outside the jurisdiction in which the sporting event takes place,” Ali says.
“This underlines why integrity threats cannot be addressed solely at the national level. Our approach therefore combines global monitoring with local partnerships, allowing suspicious betting patterns identified across multiple operators and jurisdictions to be shared quickly with the relevant authorities.”
Analysing the alert numbers
Ali begins with a warning about how the figures should be read. “It is impossible, and potentially misleading, to conclude that more alerts automatically mean more match-fixing,” he says.
Between 2021 and 2025 the association reported 117 alerts relating to African sporting events, including 31 in 2025, a year in which Africa accounted for around 10% of all alerts globally.
A further 17 alerts were recorded during the first half of 2026 – a figure Ali reads as continuity rather than escalation. “This is reasonably consistent with the rate recorded in 2025 rather than indicating a significant increase,” he says.
Several factors can influence the numbers according to the chief executive. “Betting activity is growing, more Africa-facing operators are joining international integrity monitoring networks, and regulated online betting is generating more account-level data that can be analysed,” he says. “Improved monitoring naturally increases the ability to detect suspicious patterns that may previously have gone unnoticed.”
It leads him to a distinction the association returns to repeatedly. “An alert should therefore be viewed as an intelligence output requiring further investigation, not as proof that manipulation has occurred,” he says.
“In many cases, increased alert numbers demonstrate that integrity systems are becoming more effective. The real measure is whether suspicious activity is identified quickly, shared with the appropriate authorities and investigated effectively.”
Alerts highest for football and tennis
Football and tennis accounted for the overwhelming majority of Africa-related alerts IBIA reported between 2021 and 2025. Asked whether that concentration maps the problem or maps the monitoring, Ali opts for the latter.
“It is more accurate to say that the data shows where suspicious activity is being detected rather than where manipulation is definitively concentrated,” he says. “Importantly, an alert is not proof that a match has been manipulated. It indicates that suspicious betting activity has been identified and that an investigation should be conducted by the relevant authorities.”
The sport split, he says, reflects “both betting demand and the volume of regulated market activity monitored by IBIA. Football dominates betting across Africa, while tennis generates high betting liquidity globally across a large number of events.”
On IBIA’s alert data, the betting behind a flagged match is frequently not in the country where it is played. “Betting integrity is also increasingly international. An alert linked to an African sporting event may involve betting activity originating in Europe, Asia or elsewhere,” Ali says. “This is precisely why global monitoring matters. By combining account-level intelligence from operators across multiple jurisdictions, IBIA can identify cross-border betting patterns that would be difficult, or sometimes impossible, to detect through isolated national monitoring alone.”
The restriction question
Some African federations have moved to restrict betting on their own domestic competitions, citing integrity concerns. Ali accepts the aim but questions whether restriction removes the betting or merely displaces it.
“We understand why sports federations may promote restricting betting on domestic competitions where integrity concerns exist. Protecting sporting integrity is the right objective,” he says. “The question, however, is whether restricting regulated betting removes that activity or simply pushes it towards poorly regulated or unregulated markets where there is little or no transparency.”
The difference, he says, is visibility. “Licensed operators know their customers, monitor account activity and can report suspicious betting through recognised integrity frameworks,” Ali says. “Those safeguards are largely absent in poorly regulated or unregulated markets.
“From IBIA’s perspective, the strongest integrity outcomes come from well-regulated, competitive markets with high levels of channelisation. Such markets maximise visibility and enable suspicious activity to be detected, analysed and shared with sports bodies and regulators. Regulated betting should therefore be viewed as part of the integrity solution rather than the problem.
“The objective should be to ensure that betting takes place within environments where effective monitoring and international information sharing can protect both sport and consumers.”
From alert to outcome
On IBIA’s account, the difficulty now lies less in spotting suspicious betting than in what happens next.
“An alert is the beginning of an investigation, not the end of one,” Ali says. “IBIA can identify suspicious betting activity using account-level intelligence supplied by its members, but successful outcomes depend on the wider integrity ecosystem.”
That ecosystem has several moving parts. “Regulators, law enforcement agencies and sports governing bodies all need the appropriate legal powers, investigative capacity and cooperation mechanisms to act on that intelligence,” he says.
“The international nature of betting makes this particularly challenging, as an alert linked to an African sporting event may involve customer accounts, operators and evidence located across several jurisdictions. Investigations therefore frequently require cooperation and information sharing between multiple countries.”
What would close the gap, he says, is a combination of law, cooperation and resource. “Strengthening legal frameworks, improving cross-border information sharing and investing in specialist investigative capacity will all help shorten the journey from detection to enforcement. Technology has significantly improved our ability to identify suspicious betting activity; the next step is ensuring that investigative and enforcement processes evolve at the same pace.”
What IBIA would like to see next
The association’s partnership with the African iGaming Alliance has, Ali says, “created a structured platform for engaging with regulators, operators and policymakers across more than twenty African jurisdictions. It allows integrity expertise and regulatory experience to be shared more effectively while recognising that Africa is not a single, uniform betting market.”
What he would like to see next is integrity written into licensing itself. “Looking ahead, we would like to see sports betting integrity become a formal component of licensing and regulatory frameworks across the continent,” he says.
“While progress is being made, many jurisdictions still lack clear suspicious betting reporting protocols and recognised integrity monitoring arrangements.”
He points to Ontario and Alberta as examples of best practice. “Both require licensed operators to participate in formal integrity monitoring frameworks, establish clear reporting obligations and promote cooperation between operators, regulators and sports bodies.”
The timing, he argues, provides a good opportunity. “Africa’s regulated markets are still evolving, which presents an opportunity to build those integrity measures into regulation from the outset rather than retrofitting them later. This will strengthen confidence in both sport and regulated betting over the long term.”