NAIROBI - African companies from Nairobi to Lagos are in a race to use artificial intelligence to cut their marketing and advertising budgets ahead of a difficult 2024 due to economic difficulties, fueling panic over potential job losses.
Businesses are increasingly using AI-generated images, models and voices for their advertising campaigns across TV and digital platforms, lowering their advertising budgets. Ad spending in sub-Saharan Africa fell by 11.6% in 2023, according to the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC), though a slight rebound this year is expected to be driven by a 6.1% increase in South Africa.
Safaricom, East Africa’s leading telecommunications company, unveiled what it claimed to be Africa’s first AI-generated TV ad in August. It has since rolled out other AI-driven campaigns on different platforms.
Other Kenyan companies that have rolled out AI in ads include private school group Pioneer, which ran AI-generated TV ads, and popular bread brand Supa Loaf which uses AI-generated images on its billboards. In Nigeria, Coca-Cola collaborated with local influencers in an AI-powered campaign over the Christmas period.
The surge in AI-use, propelled by the popularity of generative AI over the last year, has coincided with a downturn in many of Africa’s biggest economies. In Nigeria and Kenya, businesses are grappling with depressed earnings due to difficult macroeconomic conditions including weakening local currencies and high inflation.
African countries aren’t working together to impose restrictions on the uses of AI, unlike governments elsewhere in the world. And industry insiders lack the strong trade unions that enabled members of the U.S. film and TV industry to secure a deal limiting the use of AI.
