In a time of rising global economic uncertainty, African businesses are increasingly turning to AI to accelerate productivity and unlock a new level of ROI.
The data is compelling – according to the World Bank’s recent Global Economic Prospects report, rising global trade and policy uncertainty could weaken growth by 2.3% in 2025, impacting both major economies and emerging markets.
In the face of these headwinds, many businesses are ramping up plans to implement AI, driving new levels of productivity and cost savings. In a March 2025 survey by McKinsey, 78% of respondents reported their organisation already uses AI in at least one business function, up from 72% in early 2024 and 55% a year earlier.
Put simply, AI is the most transformative technology of our lifetime. Its latest iteration, agentic AI—always-on intelligent agents that can learn, reason, and execute tasks independently – will reshape how companies operate, compete, and perform work.
While this new era holds great promise, the journey to becoming an agentic enterprise can feel daunting.
Aligning your business with a tangible agentic AI strategy, readying your technology infrastructure, and understanding the metrics that define success are essential pillars to unlocking the agentic AI opportunity and realising the return on investment (ROI) this moment demands.
Realise trapped value with automation and augmentation
Nearly half of desk workers report spending time on repetitive, low-value, or unrelated tasks to the jobs they were hired to do. Across many industries, operational inefficiencies and unrecognised opportunities are buried deep within data, processes, and human workflows, affecting everything from employee engagement to the bottom line.
The first step to reigniting productivity growth is identifying what’s holding organisations back and finding solutions to these challenges, known as trapped value analysis.
Start by identifying where high-value, underperforming workflows exist. For example, are there manual tasks slowing teams down? Can they be automated? Which customer interactions can be more personalised?
Augmenting human capacity with a digital workforce is key to realising trapped value, enabling smarter, faster decision-making grounded in trusted data and improving personalised customer interactions at scale.
Imagine a marketer at a young company suddenly supported by a team of AI agents to strategise, plan, and deliver best-in-class campaigns. Or a sales rep with instant access to real-time customer data analysis and predictions of which leads are most likely to convert.
Deploying AI agents isn’t about replacing people; it’s about empowering employees to focus on what they do best – strategic thinking, innovating, and building relationships with customers.
Overcoming productivity pain points with a dynamic IT infrastructure powered by digital labour allows businesses to reprioritise their newly available human capacity to where it can have the greatest impact. This is key to realising new revenue streams or business models and is fundamental to unlocking ROI.
Set critical metrics to measure ROI
The advantages of digital labour for optimising operations are clear. However, according to Gartner, over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to reasons such as unclear business value.
To demonstrate real ROI, organisations need to focus on enterprise productivity, driving business value through quality, cost, speed, and scale.
For customer service teams, measuring ROI can involve assessing customer satisfaction, such as improving experiences with 24/7 support across channels where AI agents triage requests and provide step-by-step instructions using natural responses.
When Salesforce added Agentforce to its Help site in October 2024, the goal was to set a world-class standard for agentic service.
With an AI agent answering customer service questions in natural language, using unified data to provide fast, 24/7 support, our human engineers can focus on complex issues.
To date, Agentforce has handled over 1 million support requests and is projected to save $50 million annually by the end of this fiscal year.
For sales teams, ROI can be seen in faster response times and increased lead qualification. Agentic AI enables scaling with autonomous outreach to answer product questions, handle objections, and book meetings, interacting with customers across relevant channels with personalised responses.
All of these efficiency gains free up time for humans to focus on improving and driving growth in other areas of the business.
Using metrics – from deflection rates to customer satisfaction scores and operational savings — enables organisations to assess the performance of their AI agent initiatives and calculate ROI effectively.
Access long-term value
By focusing on these metrics, African businesses can effectively assess the performance of their AI initiatives and calculate ROI, moving from a position of uncertainty to one of strategic growth.
In essence, the agentic AI era is not about a single, abrupt change but a fundamental shift in how people and technology work together.
By embracing a phased, strategic approach, African businesses can navigate this transition successfully, accelerate productivity, and ultimately unlock significant long-term value. This is the new partnership that will enable businesses to thrive amid today’s challenges.
