PwC's AI Fitness Index reveals African enterprises score 5.7/10, outranking Europe and North America, yet lag global AI leaders on financial returns. While 82% of African firms run AI pilots (vs 88% for leaders), the gap lies in scaling beyond pilots. African firms spend only 2% of revenue on AI vs 5% among leaders, and only 32% consider their investment sufficient. The widest gap is in cross-sector AI convergence (5.8 vs 7.1 for leaders). Despite 64% of African workers using AI at work, only 36% of organizations trust AI-generated insights enough to act on them. A counterpoint from an industry COO challenges PwC's 'spend more, scale faster' prescription, advocating instead for smaller experiments before full budget commitment, and questioning whether the global AI hype is driven by American corporate interests.
