Will AI kill all the jobs?

Hey,

I’m Ben Hyman—CEO of Talent Safari—a community for Africa’s best startup talent.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the biggest opportunity (and threat) to jobs in recent times: AI.

And last week, at the Africa Jobtech Summit, I got to think along with some African AI leaders.

Today, I’m sharing those thoughts with you. But before we get into it…

Now, on to this week’s story….

“Will AI kill all the jobs?”

That was the question hanging over the room last week in Nairobi.

I was seated in a packed hall at the Africa Jobtech Summit—surrounded by founders, investors, and policymakers—all chewing on this same, uneasy question.

The mood? Part curiosity. Part fear. And totally warranted.

The Unemployed Continent

Let’s face it: Africa needs good jobs. Desperately.

Each year, 10–12 million young Africans enter the workforce. 

Only about 3 million formal jobs are created. 

The rest? Hustling in the informal economy—from street vending to boda-boda riding.

But the ground is shifting.

More Africans are gaining formal skills. Literacy rates are climbing. There’s a youth bulge.

But where will they work?

Africa lacks enough big companies to train this rising workforce. 

Without skills and relevant experience, the next generation can’t build the companies of tomorrow.

Recently, though, a new door cracked open: global remote work.

Thanks to the internet, young Africans are landing jobs on the global scene as virtual assistants, software developers, and customer service reps.

For the hiring companies, it’s a win: skilled talent at a lower cost.

For young Africans? The pay is often life-changing.

It’s a promising trend. The kind of thing that sparked economic booms elsewhere.

In India, the IT services industry employed millions and created a growing middle class.

In the last decade, it created 5 million direct jobs and 15 million indirect jobs.

It also makes up about 8% of the country’s GDP today.

Africa is getting on a similar trajectory.

But just as it’s finding the first rungs on this growth ladder… AI threatens to break the ladder entirely.

The Broken Ladder

Here’s the kicker: the very service jobs that powered India’s rise—call centers, customer support, basic knowledge work—are exactly what AI is automating first.

The classic economic playbook goes like this:

Move from agriculture to manufacturing, then to services.

But India showed us that it doesn’t always have to work that way.

The country has grown at more than 6% annually since 2006 while being services-first.

Meanwhile, in Africa, the manufacturing share of the economy has actually been declining

But services have been taking off.

Global companies were eyeing Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt for affordable tech and support talent.

AI could nuke Africa’s labour-cost advantage.

Why hire low-cost human labour when you can deploy 24/7 AI agents for a fraction of the price?

So, the services window might slam shut for Africa before it fully opens.

But there’s a silver lining.

AI Looks Different in Africa

Africa’s job market isn’t America’s. Or Europe’s.

Most African workers are still in agriculture, manufacturing, and manual services.

In Nigeria, over 80% of the labour force is in informal, manual sectors. Farming. Transport. Blue-collar services—not exactly ChatGPT’s sweet spot. Yet.

And the low wages here? Ironically, they buy us time. 

In developed countries, there are huge cost savings from replacing humans with AI. And companies that don’t, risk going out of business.

But in Africa, where labour is often very cheap, there’s currently little economic incentive for that.

And this is obvious even in how tech has worked out in Africa.

Many African startups exist to increase the productivity of human workers in real sectors, rather than replacing them, e.g.

• Bike-financing platforms helping riders own their bike

• Jobtech platforms connecting blue-collar workers to verified gigs

• And Talent Safari, helping match startups to Africa’s best talent in ways AI can’t (Get in touch here!)

AI could follow the same route in Africa: empowering instead of displacing people.

AI + Africa =?

Here’s where it gets exciting.

In Africa, AI isn’t just a threat. It’s also a tool to bypass old, painful constraints.

Like in Education

In Nigeria, a World Bank study let students spend part of their study time on tablets with a GPT-4 tutor.

The students typed in questions, and the AI guided them step-by-step with hints until they got answers. The teachers simply supervised along the way.

The result? They achieved two years' worth of learning in six weeks.

The research later found that with an AI tutor, you could provide a kid with 3.2 years of schooling for every $100 spent.

Now imagine scaling that across hundreds of millions of young African learners..

Early education can be transformed in Africa with better content and world-class curricula.

AI tutors can adapt to each kid’s learning needs, bypassing the limits of underfunded schools, with teachers only being there to supervise.

Africa could have a more skilled workforce to compete on the world stage.

But beyond education, AI can augment output in other areas, too.

In agriculture, where 42% of Africans work, startups like Ignitia can give smallholder farmers hyperlocal advice on when to plant and how to manage pests.

But it can’t plant for them, and humans still have to be in the loop.

Looking at it this way, AI could close the global door, but also make many local jobs more productive.

Even better, it can create new areas of opportunity.

AI’s rise will require massive quantities of minerals for energy generation and computers, many of which African nations have in abundance.

And as the world gets richer and has cheaper services, Africa’s minerals, food, and cultural exports will become more valuable. 

So it could be a double win. 

African jobs don’t totally die at the hands of AI, and the things Africa has a comparative advantage in become more valuable.

But let’s bring this back to real life with a question…

Have you seen AI in action?

At the Jobtech summit held by Jobtech Alliance, we all learned how to build and customise a customer service chatbot in under an hour.

That’s how accessible the tools are now.

Yet too many African founders are stuck, paralysed by fear or uncertainty.

At the summit, we all asked the question: What practical steps can founders take today to prepare themselves for AI? 

Something that takes them from playing defence to offence.

Here are a few ideas from the Jobtech Summit:

1. Give someone a 1-month AI sabbatical

Find the smartest person in your team and give them one month off work to go build with AI.

Let them build an internal AI tool—chatbot, automated QA, and content generator. You’ll be surprised what one person can create in a month.

2. Trojan horse strategy

You can start by offering AI consulting in a vertical you know (education, healthcare, etc).

Then, evolve into a product company, like Palantir did for defence in the US.

3. Score employees by their use of AI

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke recently announced that AI tool usage will be scored in every employee’s monthly performance.

If you want your team to use AI, you should be measuring and rewarding it.

And the Jobtech Alliance are working on not only helping founders adapt to AI, but to help them incorporate it into their day-to-day.

So, they get to unlock the benefits of AI today and prepare for the coming job winter.

So, will AI kill all the jobs?

The answer is different, depending on where you’re from.

But in Africa, probably not. 

Yes, it’s likely to decimate outsourced service jobs.

But it can also power up current, local jobs.

And even create entirely new ones.

If we think differently, if we play offence, and if we start experimenting early.

The worst move is to do nothing and worry.

The best is to experiment, learn, and build.

So, tell me. 

What opportunities do you see with AI in Africa that others are missing?

Let me know here.

That’s it for this week. See you on Sunday for a breakdown on This Week in African Tech.

Cheers,

The Tech Safari Team

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