CEO Newsletter | AI is Africa’s moment – if we manage it carefully

By Samantha Pokroy

AI could be the missing ingredient Africa needs to catch up, perhaps even to leapfrog.

That is an extraordinary sentence to write, and an even more extraordinary possibility to contemplate. For decades, Africa’s development conversation has been framed around what is missing: infrastructure, capital, skills, scale, industrial depth, institutional capacity. These constraints are real. They do not disappear because a new technology has arrived.

But AI changes something fundamental.

It has the potential to lower barriers to expertise, accelerate learning, expand productivity, support small teams, democratise access to knowledge and enable businesses to do more with less. Used well, it could help Africa unlock capabilities that have historically been too scarce, too expensive or too unevenly distributed.

Used badly, it could deepen the very inequalities we most need to overcome.

That is the tension of this moment. AI could unlock Africa’s future, or undermine it.

The question is not whether AI will reshape our economies. It already is. The question is whether we will shape its application with enough intention, urgency and care.

The opportunity is real

Africa is, in many ways, uniquely positioned for this moment.

We have a young, dynamic and growing population in a world where many regions are ageing. We have natural resources, including arable land and critical minerals, that will matter deeply in the decades ahead. We have markets that remain underpenetrated, businesses that are highly adaptive and entrepreneurs accustomed to solving problems without perfect conditions.

We also have enormous unmet need: in education, healthcare, energy, food security, logistics, financial inclusion, government services and business productivity.

This is precisely where AI can be powerful. It can help scarce expertise travel further. It can support teachers, doctors, engineers, analysts, entrepreneurs and managers. It can help businesses improve decision-making, automate repetitive work, identify risk, personalise learning, reduce friction and scale faster.

For a continent that has often lacked sufficient access to specialist skills, AI has the potential to be a profound equaliser.

But only if we use it to enhance human capability rather than replace it.

The risk is just as real

The most immediate danger is unemployment.

In a continent where job creation has not kept pace with demographic growth, widespread labour displacement would be socially and economically destabilising. The emerging middle class is particularly exposed. Many knowledge-worker roles that once represented upward mobility are now among the first to be reshaped by generative and agentic AI.

If AI is used primarily as a cost-cutting tool, the result may be a short-term productivity gain followed by a longer-term weakening of purchasing power, social stability and inclusive growth.

That is not a good trade.

The second danger is more subtle, but perhaps even more profound: the erosion of human cognitive capability.

Did you know: recent neurological and educational research suggests that Gen Z may be the first generation in a century to score lower on cognitive and IQ tests than their parents, reversing a long-standing historical trend known as the “Flynn Effect”, with current young people seeing measured drops in areas like sustained attention, memory, and general problem-solving. Sad as this is, I do get some kicks from telling my children that their generation is the first to be stupider than their parents. But to serious matters…it is too early to blame AI, but digital exposure to short-form content and other social media is already believed to be a cause. We cannot responsibly ignore the risk that AI will compound this.

The concept of cognitive offloading is well established: humans use tools to reduce mental effort. That is not inherently bad. We have always done it. Calculators, maps, search engines and spreadsheets all changed how we think and work.

The issue is whether the tool extends our thinking, or replaces it.

With AI, that distinction matters enormously. If we use AI to challenge assumptions, test reasoning, accelerate research, improve judgement and deepen understanding, it can sharpen the mind. If we use it to avoid the hard work of thinking, it can weaken the very capabilities we most need.

AI should sharpen minds, not replace them.

Education is the front line

This tension is most visible in education.

AI offers extraordinary possibilities: affordable personalised tutoring, access to the sum of human knowledge, language support, adaptive learning, teacher augmentation and skills development at scale. For many children and young adults across Africa, this could be transformational.

Imagine a learner in a rural area with access to a high-quality AI tutor. Imagine a teacher supported with lesson planning, diagnostics and personalised interventions. Imagine a young person learning technology, sciences, financial literacy, mathematics, design, entrepreneurship or a new language with patient, responsive support.

That is the promise.

But there is another version of the story.

A learner asks AI for the answer, submits the work and bypasses the thinking. A student completes an essay without developing an argument. A professional produces a report without understanding the logic. Over time, productivity may appear to rise while capability quietly erodes.

This is why simply “adopting AI” in education is not enough. We need a philosophy for how it should be used.

AI should be a tutor, not a proxy. It should guide, question, test and stretch. It should make learning more accessible, but not make effort optional. It should support productive struggle, not eliminate it.

The goal is not to protect old ways of learning for their own sake. Nor is it to ban the new tools and pretend they are not here. The goal is to design learning environments where AI strengthens human intelligence, judgement and agency.

Access will determine the outcome

There is another uncomfortable truth: meaningful AI access is not free.

Yes, many tools are available at low or no cost. But the difference between casual use and deep productivity is significant. Playing around with free tools can create the illusion of participation without unlocking the compounding advantage of real AI capability.

To use AI well requires connectivity, devices, quality models, workflow integration, training, judgement, time and a deep understanding of how AI models work. It requires knowing not only what to ask, but how to think with the tool, how to prompt, relevant context, models for cognition, limitations on model intelligence (if you’ve experienced AI getting stupider as you work with it, you are not imagining it – it happens and you need to know when and how to avert it). If you are using AI only for chat and search, know that you are missing a trick.

This is where inequality can widen quickly.

Those with access to advanced tools, good connectivity, strong education on the mechanics of AI and supportive systems will move faster. Those without may fall further behind. Companies with the capital and management capacity to integrate AI meaningfully will gain productivity advantages. Those that do not will find themselves competing against lower-cost, faster-moving businesses.

This is not a distant future. It is already unfolding.

Ignoring AI will not protect industries. Competitive forces will not pause because we are uncomfortable. Businesses that refuse to optimise will face competitors that can deliver faster, better or cheaper. Consumers may benefit from lower prices over time, but if productivity gains come through job destruction rather than human augmentation, those same consumers may lose income and purchasing power.

That is the circularity we need to manage and prepare for carefully.

Africa needs its own path

There is no value in attempting to replicate development models from another time. The Asian Tigers did not build in the age of generative and agentic AI. The policy, labour and industrial choices available today are different because the world itself is different.

Africa must define its own path.

That path should start with a clear principle: AI must augment human development, not undermine it.

This means investing aggressively in education, connectivity, digital infrastructure and skills. It means supporting businesses that use AI to improve productivity while building capability. It means preparing workers not only to use AI tools, but to exercise judgement over them. The winners will have individual, human agency and drive – individuals will determine their own roles and positions in this evolving world more than ever before. The question: Will you lead with agency and innovation, or will you wait to be a victim of AI? As business leaders, we need to encourage innovation while being alert to social consequences.

It also means collaboration.

During Covid-19, we saw how quickly business, government and civil society could mobilise when the urgency was clear – Africa rose up to this challenge and delivered some exceptional results in healthcare and societal protection (when we were expected to suffer the most). We need a similar urgency now, but without waiting for a crisis to force the issue. The AI transition requires co-ordination across public policy, private capital, education systems and industry.

Politically, countries may not always be aligned. Economically, our interests are deeply connected.

Africa’s free trade ambitions, regional markets and continental integration matter even more in this context. Scale matters. Shared infrastructure matters. Cross-border learning matters. So, too, does ensuring that Africa is not merely a consumer of imported AI tools, but a participant in shaping applications, datasets, businesses and governance models that reflect our realities.

The role of private capital

Private capital has an important role to play.

Investors increasingly seek not only financial returns, but measurable impact. That dual mandate matters. It creates an incentive to back businesses that expand access, build skills, improve productivity, strengthen resilience and create decent work.

Private equity is well positioned to support this transition. At its best, private equity is not passive capital. It works with companies through inflection points. It helps leadership teams build systems, professionalise, scale, govern and adapt. In an AI-shaped world, this work becomes even more important.

At Sanari, we think deeply about this. We invest behind themes that sit at the intersection of human need and technological possibility: connected industry, data, education, healthcare, wellness, food systems, energy and environmental solutions. We look for businesses that can become sustainable, scalable and saleable – and increasingly, that means businesses able to use technology responsibly and effectively.

The AI question is now part of the value creation question. It is part of the resilience question. It is part of the impact question.

How can this company use AI to improve productivity without hollowing out capability? How can it augment its people? How can it build better systems? How can it protect against disruption? How can it create more opportunity, not less?

These are no longer optional strategic questions. They are core to building businesses fit for the future.

A fork in the road

We are at a fork in the road.

One path treats AI as a tool for broad-based human development. It invests in access, infrastructure, skills, education and responsible business adoption. It uses AI to extend expertise, unlock productivity, support teachers, strengthen companies and create new forms of work.

The other path allows AI to concentrate advantage, displace workers, weaken learning and deepen inequality.

Without conviction, the default outcome is unlikely to be positive.

The imperative is clear. Africa must engage with AI urgently, but not blindly. We must be ambitious, but also intentional. We must move fast, but with a strong philosophy of human augmentation.

AI should not be something that happens to Africa.

It should be something Africa uses – deliberately, creatively and collectively – to build capability, expand opportunity and participate more fully in the global economy.

This could be Africa’s moment.

But only if we manage it carefully.