The Unique Challenges of Zero Trust in Sub-Saharan Africa: Survey Insights and Research Directions

Organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face distinctive cybersecurity challenges that make Zero Trust (ZT) adoption both urgent and complex. While telecom-driven Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and Know Your Customer(KYC) offer a promising identity foundation, barriers remain skills shortages, high costs, weak vendor ecosystems, and uneven regulation. To examine these constraints, we conducted a twostage survey (exploratory n = 33, expert validation n = 15) across telecommunications, banking, healthcare, and academia. Results reveal skills, cost, and vendor gaps as the dominant inhibitors of ZT adoption. Drawing on Institutional Theory and Porter's Diamond Model, we explain how SSA's structural conditions shape readiness. Motivated by these insights, we introduce a ZT-IAM prototype as a research artifact, illustrating how SIM-based identity binding, multi-factor authentication, and contextual trust scoring can be adapted to SSA settings. This work contributes empirical evidence, theory-informed analysis, and a proof-ofconcept prototype, offering a grounded pathway for advancing Zero Trust in SSA.