ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

How African marketing strategies are embracing the potential of AI

By our African Marketing Confederation News Team | 2026

From movie-style extravaganzas to conversations with digital clones and enhancing visuals, marketers are doing more than just tinker with AI.  

African marketers have come a long way since East African telecoms giant Safaricom flighted what it called the continent’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-generated TV ad in 2023.  

Egyptian actor Karim Abdelaziz in an AI-enhanced advert for Orange Egypt

Egyptian actor Karim Abdelaziz in an AI-enhanced advert for Orange Egypt

Already leveraging AI and machine learning to develop products, the Safaricom Chapa Dimba football commercial was a logical next step in the quest to combine human and machine intelligence.  

 

Since then, Kenyan bread brand Supa Loaf attracted consumer interest – and some criticism – when it dropped a visual of one of its bread loaves into an existing AI-generated image, and hoisted it onto a billboard. The ad showed a mother running after her smiling baby, speeding away with a huge loaf of bread. 

 

Some consumers felt the ad looking too unrealistic, while Kenyan photographers and videographers voiced concerns at AI-based campaigns taking work from local industry professionals. 

 

Farmer’s Choice in Kenya, which produces meat products, did much the same thing: repurposing an AI image and just adding a sizzling beef sausage.  

 

Safaricom, meanwhile, has kept raking up wins with a hybrid-collaboration approach, using AI to tweak human photographs for its 2024 corporate calendar to ramp up the ‘wow’ factor. 

 

Egyptian telecoms ad blends imagination with technology 

 

In 2025, telecoms company Orange Egypt released its first AI-enhanced advert, featuring well-known Egyptian actor Karim Abdelaziz.  

 

Driving the narrative that super-fast 5G revolutionises the user experience, the ad merged imagination with technology, injecting Abdelaziz into a series of fun – yet futuristic – Hollywood-style scenarios.  

 

At the southern tip of the continent, South African banking group Absa’s ‘The Story Behind the Numbers’ campaign, released in July 2025, featured an unscripted conversation between a well-known financial journalist and her AI-generated digital twin.  

 

As Absa’s Group Chief Marketing & Corporate Affairs Officer, Sydney Mbhele, observed: The 95-second spot made the point that “technology should serve human purpose” and human beings are “more than data points – they’re people with dreams, challenges, and stories that deserve to be heard”. 

 

What these examples illustrate is how dynamically and enthusiastically African marketers are leaning into AI to enhance their creative outputs.  

 

Find out more about how African marketers are embracing AI in the latest issue (Issue 4 2025) of Strategic Marketing for Africa – the voice of African marketing and the official publication of the African Marketing Confederation (AMC). Read it online here. A Print Edition is also available. 

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Jason Lottering
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    Dr Kin Kariisa

    Group CEO - Next Media

    Dr. Kin Kariisa is an extraordinary force at the helm of Next Media Services, a conglomerate encompassing NBS TV, Nile Post, Sanyuka TV, Next Radio, Salam TV, Next Communication, Next Productions, and an array of other influential enterprises. His dynamic role as Chief Executive Officer exemplifies his unwavering commitment to shaping media, business, and community landscapes.
    With an esteemed academic journey, Dr. Kariisa’s accolades include an Honorary PhD in exemplary community service from the United Graduate College inTexas, an MBA from United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya, a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Huazong University in China, and a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Makerere University.
    Dr. Kariisa pursued PhD research in Computer Security and Identity Management at Security of Systems Group, Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. As a dynamic educator, he has shared his expertise as a lecturer of e-Government and Information Security at both Makerere University and Radboud University.

    Dr Kin did his PhD research in Computer Security and Identity Management at Security of Systems Group, Radbond University in Nigmegen, Netherlands. He previously served as a lecturer of e-Government and Information Security at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and Radbond University in Netherlands.

    Dr Kin did his postgraduate courses in Strategic Business Management, Strategic Leadership Communication and Strategies for Leading Successful Change Initiatives at Harvard University, Boston USA.

    • Other current and previous roles played by Dr Kin Kariisa:
    • Lecturer of e-Government and Information Security to graduate students at Makerere University, Kampala and Radbond University in the Netherlands
    • Director of Eco Bank Uganda Limited, one of the largest banks in Africa
    • Chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters, an umbrella industry association for all Television, Radio and online broadcasters in Uganda.
    • Chairman of Board of Directors of Nile Hotel International, that owns the leading hotel in Uganda, Kampala Serena Hotel.
    • Chairman of Board of Directors of Soliton Telmec Uganda, the leading telecom company in Optic fibre business managing over 80% of optic fibre in Uganda.