NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1 — Artificial intelligence has arrived in Kenya long before the country has fully figured out what to do with it.

📻 Breaking It Down

From banks and insurance companies to technology firms, newsrooms and small businesses, Kenyans are increasingly turning to AI tools to write, translate, analyse information, generate images, assist with coding and automate routine work.

The scale of adoption is striking. The Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update, based on research covering more than 240,000 people across 54 markets, found that 97.5 per cent of Kenyan internet users aged 16 and above had used at least one AI tool in the previous month — the highest rate among the markets tracked. Kenya was followed by the United Arab Emirates at 94.2 per cent and Indonesia at 93.6 per cent.

But beneath the excitement lies a more difficult question: Is artificial intelligence delivering the economic revolution being promised, or is much of the current enthusiasm simply hype?

📌 What You Need to Know

For businesses, AI promises lower operating costs, greater productivity and new products. For workers, it has revived fears that machines could make some jobs obsolete. For consumers, it has opened new concerns around misinformation, privacy and accountability when automated systems get things wrong.

Kenya is therefore moving into a more consequential phase of the AI debate — one that is no longer about whether the technology matters, but whether widespread adoption can translate into measurable economic gains.

Technology Service Providers of Kenya (TESPOK) Chairman James Turuthi says Kenyans are adopting AI at extraordinary speed, but cautions against confusing widespread use with economic transformation.

“Kenyans are using AI faster than almost anyone on earth. That part is real. What’s still catching up is whether that usage has actually changed how businesses make money,” Mr Turuthi says.

Many companies remain at the pilot stage, testing AI for customer service, marketing, fraud detection, credit scoring, document processing and data analysis.

The real measure of success, however, is not whether an organisation has introduced an AI tool. It is whether that tool saves money, generates revenue, improves decision-making, increases productivity or delivers a better service.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya