Artificial intelligence has become a fixture of boardroom agendas, but the human dimension of its rollout remains the decisive variable. Speaking on the TechCentral Show, Celiwe Ross, Old Mutual's executive responsible for people and brand, argued that the success of AI adoption in African enterprise will be measured in how organisations carry their workforces through it — not just in the capability of the models themselves.

Why People Matter First

Ross noted that the most capable technology yields nothing if people do not trust it, use it, or understand how their roles evolve alongside it. At Old Mutual, South Africa's oldest financial-services business, the approach has been to make adoption explicitly human-centred: communicating the purpose of each change, involving teams in designing how they will work with new tools, and investing in continuous reskilling rather than one-off training.

The Local Angle

Financial services is where South African AI deployment is furthest along — fraud detection, claims triage, and credit assessment models are now standard in the country's banks and insurers. But the industry also carries a disproportionate share of the economy's formal employment. If adoption is handled insensitively, the social cost lands directly on households.

Ross's point is therefore both strategic and social: organisations that lead with empathy typically retain the institutional knowledge they need to actually succeed with AI, while those that treat workforces as a cost variable usually fail to operationalise what they buy.

A Wider Lesson

The observation holds beyond banking. Across telecoms, retail and logistics — the sectors where South African AI adoption is concentrated — the leadership discipline that separates successful programmes from expensive experiments is remarkably consistent: clear purpose, honest communication, and measurement tied to customer outcomes rather than activity metrics.