Uche Cecil Izuora
A new report has found that African companies are investing insignificant amounts to Artificial intelligence making them lag behind.
The report from consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), shows that large African companies are investing significantly less in artificial intelligence than their counterparts in the world’s leading AI markets.
The report, Decoding ROI from AI in Africa, found that major African businesses allocate an average of 2 per cent of their annual revenue to AI, compared with 5 per cent among companies in countries such as the United States, China, Germany, and France.
The study is the African edition of PwC’s global AI performance survey, which covered 1,217 senior executives from large companies across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America, and South America.
About 76 per cent of the surveyed firms generate at least $1 billion in annual revenue, while 91 per cent are publicly listed. In Africa, the survey included 85 companies with similar profiles.
PwC attributes the lower level of AI investment to the economic and operational challenges many African companies have faced in recent years.
After navigating economic volatility, regulatory changes, infrastructure constraints, and geopolitical disruptions, many businesses have prioritized resilience over long-term transformation initiatives.
In uncertain operating environments, maintaining current performance often takes precedence over major technology investments.
Yet the report suggests companies recognize the need to invest more. Only 32 per cent of African firms surveyed believe their current AI spending is sufficient to achieve their objectives, compared with 55 per cent in leading AI markets.
Most African companies are already experimenting with AI. About 82 per cent reported running pilot projects, compared with 88 per cent in leading AI countries and 85 per cent in other regions outside Africa. However, relatively few have scaled AI across their entire organizations, largely because of limited investment and gaps in data and technology readiness.
Despite those constraints, many companies are already seeing tangible benefits. Twenty-three percent of executives surveyed reported revenue growth linked to AI initiatives over the past year, while 25 per cent reported lower operating costs.
Much of that early value appears to come from efficiency gains in support functions such as human resources, finance, legal services, and other operational areas. But PwC argues that the technology’s greatest potential lies elsewhere.
According to the report, artificial intelligence could help businesses expand access to underserved markets, redesign value chains affected by infrastructure bottlenecks, and develop new products, services, and business models across sectors including finance, energy, healthcare, logistics, and agriculture.
In that sense, AI has the potential to do far more than improve efficiency. It could reshape how value is created and delivered across the economy.
PwC’s global survey found that the top 20 per cent of AI-performing companies capture 74 per cent of the returns generated by the technology. These firms share three common characteristics: they use AI to drive growth and business reinvention, build the foundations needed to support adoption, and integrate AI across their operations.
The report also identifies sector convergence as one of Africa’s biggest missed opportunities. African companies are less likely than firms in leading AI markets to use artificial intelligence to expand beyond traditional industry boundaries. The continent scored an average of 5.8 out of 10 on sector convergence, compared with 7.1 in leading AI countries.
The gap reflects lower use of AI to collaborate across industries, compete in adjacent markets, and create new sources of value as sectors increasingly overlap.
For Africa, this issue is particularly important because many of the continent’s biggest development challenges sit at the intersection of multiple industries.
Financial inclusion, for example, depends on the convergence of banking, telecommunications, and retail. Expanding access to energy requires coordination between energy, mining, and infrastructure sectors. Agricultural productivity increasingly depends on logistics, finance, and climate intelligence, while healthcare access is being reshaped by the convergence of data, insurance, payments, and care delivery.
PwC also argues that employee attitudes toward artificial intelligence could become a major driver of adoption across the continent.
Its Africa Workforce Hopes and Fears survey, published in December 2025, found that African workers are adopting AI faster than the global average.
About 64 per cent reported using AI at work during the previous 12 months, compared with 54 per cent worldwide. In addition, 76 per cent said the technology improves the quality of their work, while 72 per cent expect it to boost productivity over the next three years.
Those findings suggest that while African companies may currently lag global leaders in AI investment, employee readiness could provide a foundation for faster adoption in the years ahead.