Africa to benefit from AI’s $15.7trn global economic revolution by 2030 — PwC

A new report by PwC UK has revealed that Africa, Oceania, and Asia continents are set to benefit from the $15.7 trillion AI global economic revolution by 2030.

The report titled, ‘Sizing the prize: What’s the real value of AI for your business and how can you capitalise?’ disclosed that $6.6 trillion from the economic prize is likely to come from increased productivity and $9.1 trillion from the consumption side effects.

“AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030, more than the current output of China and India combined. All regions of the global economy will experience benefits from artificial intelligence but North America and China stand to see the biggest economic gains,” the report said.

Further breakdown of the report showed that AI will enhance North America’s GDP by 26.1 percent to $3.7 trillion and China’s GDP by 14.5 percent to $7 trillion which is 70 percent of the global economic impact.

Europe and Developed Asia will also experience significant economic gains from AI enhancing GDP by 21.4 percent to $2.5 trillion and 10.4 percent to $900 billion respectively.

“Developing countries like Latin America and Africa will experience more modest increases by 5.4 percent and 5.6 percent respectively, due to the much lower rates of adoption of AI technologies expected,” the report added.

It added that Latin America will gain $500 billion while Africa, Oceania, and other Asian markets will benefit $1.2 trillion by 2030.

According to PwC, AI is set to be the key source of transformation, disruption, and competitive advantage in today’s fast-changing economy.

Over the past decade, almost all aspects of how we work and how we live – from retail to manufacturing to healthcare – have become increasingly digitised.

However, analysis carried out by PwC’s AI specialists anticipates that the data generated from the Internet of Things (IoT) will outstrip the data generated by the Internet of People many times over.

From a macroeconomic point of view, PwC’s AI index highlighted that there are opportunities for emerging markets to leapfrog more developed counterparts.

“Within your business sector, one of today’s start-ups or a business that hasn’t even been founded yet could be the market leader in ten years,” it said.

It added that the labor productivity improvements are expected to account for over 55 percent of all GDP gains from AI between 2017 – 2030.

“As new technologies are gradually adopted and consumers respond to improved products with increased demand, the share of impact from product innovation increases over time while 58 percent of all GDP gains in 2030 will come from consumption-side impacts,” the report added.