(Agence Ecofin) – The report highlights that more than half of African bosses expect emerging technologies to have a significant impact on the way their company creates, delivers and captures value in the future.
Companies operating in sub-Saharan Africa are generally less likely to have integrated generative artificial intelligence (AI) than their counterparts on a global scale, according to a report published on May 30 by the auditing and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). ).
The report, which is based on a survey carried out among 380 business leaders operating in the region as part of the “Global CEO Survey 2024” carried out in 105 countries around the world, specifies that 27% of African bosses surveyed say that their company has already adopted generative AI compared to a global average of 32%.
However, this adoption rate is expected to increase in the future, given that 51% of African leaders expect generative AI to increase competitive intensity in their industry over the next three years, driving the entry into the market of new players, the appearance of innovative products and the emergence of new pricing approaches.
Similarly, 61% of respondents believe that generative AI will significantly change the way their company creates, delivers and captures value over the next three years, while 51% predict that this disruptive technology will improve product quality and services offered to consumers.
In this same chapter, 33% of African business leaders say they have already changed their technology transformation strategy, due to this profoundly transformative technology, a rate slightly higher than the global average of 31%. Especially since generative AI is expected to revolutionize all sectors. In the field of financial services for example, its main interests lie in improving fraud detection, strengthening risk assessment and personalizing customer interactions, which increases efficiency and promotes reduction costs.
The healthcare sector is expected to benefit from AI-assisted early disease detection, personalized treatment planning, and new drug discovery.
Retail players are also leveraging the technology through personalized product recommendations, price optimization, and improved customer service, while manufacturing and logistics sectors can use generative AI to optimize supply chains, predict demand, and improve production efficiency.
Increased investments in cloud computing
Entitled “Africa Business Agenda-Tech-enabled digital transformation”, the report reveals, however, that African bosses perceive significant risks linked to generative AI, due to current limitations of the technology such as hallucinations (incorrect or misleading results generated by major language models) and the absence of coherent logical reasoning. 48% of them recognize, in fact, that generative AI can increase legal liabilities and reputational risk, compared to 46% globally. Hence the need to adopt stronger data governance frameworks and involve employees in the technology integration process.
On the other hand, 21% of managers surveyed expect workforce reductions due to the increasing adoption of this technology, which is considered with some apprehension by workers, compared to 25% globally.
On another level, the report indicates that the adoption of cloud computing by companies operating in sub-Saharan Africa is greater than that of generative AI. 12% of the executives surveyed indicate that they have adopted this technology in all their operations, while 38% say they have adopted it in many parts of their activities. 32% have adopted the cloud in some operations and 19% do not yet use this type of solution.
Considering the benefits that cloud computing brings to businesses, 82% of respondents say they will have increased their investments in this area in 2023.
More generally, more than half of African CEOs (52%) covered by the survey expect emerging technologies to have a significant impact on how their business creates, delivers and captures value in the future, higher than the global average (46%).
The report also notes that 40% of executives believe their company would not be economically viable within a decade if it continued on its current transformation trajectory. This rate rises to 57% over a horizon of more than ten years, which underlines the need to accelerate the reinvention of the business models of companies operating south of the Sahara.
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