Call for business leaders to adopt AI for increased productivity

RIKA Africa Faculty Debbie Hollis, RIKA Africa Executive Director Susan Githuku and Standard Group board member and RIKA Faculty Thomas Omondi during the RIKA leadership programme class of 2025 graduation at the Rika Africa Summit 2025, in Nairobi, on July 31, 2025. [David Gichuru, Standard [ There is a need for the top leadership of companies to acquaint themselves with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance productivity. Participants at the RIKA Africa Summit in Nairobi, said the top leadership should incorporate youth due to their fresh perspectives on issues, knowledge of AI, willingness to learn, and potential to add value even without prior experience. This comes at a time when young people are increasingly taking up top positions in companies as the older generation exits the stage. The summit attracted 200 participants, mostly senior business leaders and chief human resource officers from across the continent, under the theme; "Exploring the nexus of AI, talent, productivity, leadership and evolving markets." According to Natalie Manga, Program Director at Rika Africa, said Africa is promising when it comes to the human capital capabilities for the world. "Last summit last year in November, we had our topic on productivity, growth and talent. This year we said why don't we elevate the conversation towards speaking about leadership at large so that more leaders can be part of this conversation," said Ms Manga. The event culminated into the graduation of 32 RIKA Leadership Programme 6th cohort. "We have fellows who have come all from across the continent, from Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa and Dubai. So it's such a big event today really to champion leadership in Africa and the promise that our human capability, of the promise we have of human capability here in Africa," Manga said. Rika Africa offers leadership development for the advancement of skills and tool sets for human capital leaders. George Owuor, Vice President of East, West and North Africa for Government Affairs and Policy at Mastercard lauded the Rika Africa Leadership Summit saying it's building a whole new contingent and workforce for Africa in the next 15 to 20 years that is adaptive to what industries need. "We had very tough conversations about young leadership, millennial leadership and what's going on today with the human resource world. People have been losing their jobs, economies are not doing very well, so we had a discussion on how people now learn new skills when they're well advanced in their careers," said Owuor. "And actually one thing came out very, very clearly. The world of stability is completely gone as we knew it. However, there is a new currency that we can use; agility. Agility is the new stability for 2025 and beyond," he added. Owuor defended the adoption of AI saying it's a key driver in the industry. "AI is the future in the sense that it is going to help and facilitate so much more growth. And so when we are talking about leadership and we're talking about AI, we can't separate them anymore. It's almost as if 20 years ago we used to hear people talk about tech. Now tech is embedded in everything. It's the same way that AI will be," he said. He explained that AI will only harness and unleash the power that Africa has and circumvent or even surpass traditional countries or traditional regions that have done better in the past because they had a head start. Bryan Kariuki, Regional Vice President for SeamlessHR, who spoke on redefining leadership in the age of AI, said workplace dynamics have changed and therefore leaders need to adapt less they become obsolete in the near future. "The environment in which we are operating in has changed. Things are not only changing but the rate of change is increasing and so we find that a lot of organisations have been built for a world that is no longer there," said Kariuki "Even when you look at organisational structures, a lot of them are top-down, very hierarchical, organized, very similar to the military in a command and control structure where the person at the top makes all the decisions and the people at the bottom their job is to execute, but nowadays that has changed and information is everywhere," he added. Kariuki challenged HR professionals to become leaders and designers of the organisations of the future, which require a different approach, empowering the people and responding to the environment.

Call for business leaders to adopt AI for increased productivity

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