Generative AI has captured the imagination of businesses, governments, and society at large. The possibilities seem limitless—from transforming customer experiences to designing entirely new business models and reinventing how industries operate.
Yet, for all the excitement, the reality is stark: very few organisations are turning these possibilities into real, scaled reinvention. According to Accenture’s research, only 36% of executives report having scaled generative AI solutions, and a mere 13% have achieved significant enterprise-level value from these initiatives.
For South African businesses, the decisive moment is now. Winning in the generative AI era will require moving beyond experimentation into execution.
South African organisations must act decisively. We cannot afford to stay trapped in perpetual pilot projects, small-scale proofs of concept, or academic debates about AI’s future.
Business leaders must take bold steps to industrialise the deployment of generative AI across their organisations, rewiring business processes, rethinking customer engagement, and creating entirely new value propositions.
Call to action is clear
The call to action is clear: act now, scale fast, or risk becoming irrelevant in a global economy where agility and reinvention are paramount.
True reinvention begins with mindset. Leaders must move from viewing AI as a set of isolated projects to treating it as a strategic imperative woven into the fabric of the business. This requires personal involvement from CEOs, CFOs, CIOs and boards.
AI must not be delegated solely to IT departments or innovation labs. It must be treated as a core leadership agenda item, critical to long-term competitiveness, resilience, and relevance.
Accenture has delivered over a thousand Generative AI projects globally, helping clients across industries unlock new levels of performance, creativity, and efficiency. This proves that the value of generative AI extends far beyond prototypes and pilot programmes—it lies in scaled execution that solves real business problems.
Real reinvention
In South Africa, some pioneering organisations are already demonstrating what real reinvention looks like. In the financial services sector, AI is being used to reinvent how credit risk is assessed, enabling more inclusive lending. In healthcare, generative AI is enhancing diagnostic accuracy and personalising patient care.
In retail, AI is transforming inventory management, marketing, and customer service. These are not isolated wins, they are early indicators of a broader wave of transformation that can reshape South Africa’s economic trajectory if scaled effectively.
Yet, barriers remain. Many organisations are held back by legacy systems, fragmented data architectures, and siloed operating models. Others are paralysed by concerns around governance, ethics, or risk. While these are challenges, they are not insurmountable.
What is needed is a clear strategic roadmap that balances ambition with responsible implementation, which aligns AI deployment with business outcomes, and that builds trust with customers, employees, and regulators.
Talent a critical enabler
One critical enabler of real reinvention is talent. South African companies must invest in building hybrid teams that combine technical AI expertise with deep business acumen. Employees must be empowered to work alongside AI tools, augmenting their capabilities and driving continuous innovation. Upskilling, reskilling, and fostering a culture of experimentation will be essential to embedding AI into the organisational DNA.
One critical enabler of real reinvention is talent. South African companies must invest in building hybrid teams that combine technical AI expertise with deep business acumen. Employees must be empowered to work alongside AI tools, augmenting their capabilities and driving continuous innovation.
Upskilling, reskilling, and fostering a culture of experimentation will be essential to embedding AI into the organisational DNA. It is estimated that up to 40% of all working hours across industries can be supported or augmented by language-based AI, highlighting the significant potential for productivity gains through effective human-AI collaboration.
As good as the data that feeds it
Data is another pillar of successful reinvention. Generative AI is only as good as the data that feeds it. Organisations must invest in building high-quality, ethical, and well-governed data ecosystems. This includes ensuring transparency, fairness, and explainability in AI-driven decisions — particularly critical in a country like South Africa where issues of bias, equity, and inclusion are paramount.
Partnerships will also play a key role. No single company can master the complexities of generative AI alone. South African businesses must collaborate with technology providers, academic institutions, startups, and industry peers to accelerate innovation, share best practices, and drive collective progress. Building ecosystems, not silos, will define the leaders of the generative AI age.
Critically, real reinvention requires courage. Courage to invest in technology during uncertain economic times. Courage to rethink long-standing business models. Courage to experiment, fail fast, and learn faster. Courage to place trust in new ways of working powered by human-machine collaboration.
Significant rewards
The rewards are significant. Organisations that successfully scale generative AI are seeing measurable gains, higher revenue growth, stronger customer loyalty, increased operational efficiency, and greater agility in navigating disruption.
At a national level, successful reinvention can drive productivity gains, stimulate new industries, and create meaningful jobs in a rapidly digitalising global economy.
The danger is not that generative AI will fail to live up to its hype. The danger is that those who hesitate will find themselves outpaced by more agile, more daring competitors. Reinvention is no longer optional. It is the price of admission to the next chapter of economic relevance.
We can choose to lead, to pioneer, and to set an example of responsible, scaled AI-driven reinvention. Or we can choose to lag, consuming innovations created elsewhere. The path we choose will shape our competitiveness, our prosperity, and our place in the world for decades to come.
Junaid Kleinschmidt is intelligence lead for Accenture, Africa.
