<\/p>\n
You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n
SIMON BROWN: I\u2019m chatting with Frank Blackmore, lead economist at KPMG, talking about the KPMG Africa CEO Outlook for 2026.<\/p>\n
Frank, I appreciate the time. When I kick off, 86% of CEOs across the continent grew revenue last year; 72% are confident in their home economies. That\u2019s higher than their confidence in the global economy. Is this home bias? Is this worries around global geopolitical concerns, or am I just reading too much into it, perhaps?<\/p>\n
FRANK BLACKMORE: I think it\u2019s a confluence of many things. The feedback we\u2019ve received from the CEOs is that the world has changed in the way it works. We were hit with Covid, then the war in the Ukraine.<\/p>\n
That was followed by an inflationary bump, supply-chain issues, another war, Trump tariffs \u2013 this here of course \u2013 the Middle East, and fuel energy price disruptions.<\/p>\n
But what the CEOs were saying is, when they were speaking about Covid and even the war and the increasing prices then of energy, that there would be contraction in countries. Things wouldn\u2019t go ahead.<\/p>\n
Read:
Business confidence drops in Q3 despite reform progress
South Africa business mood slips as Iran war upends rate outlook
Business confidence: How 70-year-old survey has given early signals of SA\u2019s economic pulse<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t turn out to be the case. Economies were fairly resilient and allowed you to continue growing your businesses, especially on the African continent. And that has just become a more comfortable environment for a lot of these CEOs to work in.<\/p>\n
I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing here, along with obviously better prospects for African business in general. There\u2019s a lot more going on on the continent.<\/p>\n
SIMON BROWN: And when you list it, starting with Covid, it is a surprisingly long list for a mere six-and-a-half-year period. They also \u2013 58% \u2013 expect earnings growth of at least 2.5% over the next three years; that\u2019s per year.<\/p>\n
But it seems a low bar. Is that just a sort of base and they\u2019re hoping for better, or are they struggling to really get down to the bottom line?<\/p>\n
FRANK BLACKMORE: So I think it is a base, because if I take a look at the operational priorities of African CEOs, number one on that is organic growth.<\/p>\n
That tells you most CEOs in Africa are saying: \u2018There\u2019s much more out there that we could be doing. Let\u2019s concentrate on organic growth to get some of that coming in.\u2019<\/p>\n
Along with that are things like improving customer experience. Africa is a diverse place. When you touch the consumer \u2013 whether through advertising, through physical relationships or online relationships \u2013 this could be done better in Africa and be more focused on the people. That\u2019s another focus area.<\/p>\n
Read:
SA\u2019s business mood steadies despite ongoing Iran war
SA\u2019s advertising boom raises questions over who benefits<\/p>\n
And then the last one is of course increased use of digitalisation and connectivity across the business. So it gives you kind of more reach, more bang for your buck. All those three are their top operational priorities and they all tell me one thing \u2013 that there is a large desire to grow their businesses.<\/p>\n
SIMON BROWN: That then brings me to AI, with 72% saying it\u2019s the top investment priority. Only 14% think they\u2019re keeping pace, as opposed to globally where the number is two-thirds. Is this a skills issue or is this data or even infrastructure? I\u2019m thinking power, I\u2019m thinking cost of compute. Where is the friction that they\u2019re finding there?<\/p>\n
FRANK BLACKMORE: I think all of those. So again the feedback from CEOs is you only have a certain budget available to you; what do you spend it on within the organisation?<\/p>\n
So these are, for example, the top three threats that they\u2019re bringing up: Cybersecurity, data security on the one side, and on the other integration of AI into the organisation.<\/p>\n
The one is defensive; do we use it there first, or do we use it for the growth parts of the business? There\u2019s only so much budget available. And then, as you said as well, the energy concerns.<\/p>\n
Read:
Companies may be held liable when AI harms their clients and\u00a0customers
AI will change jobs before it changes job descriptions
Investment strategies, AI and human governance
Technology leaders debate Africa\u2019s AI ambitions
AI saves time but most companies waste the gain<\/p>\n
So there\u2019s a lot of thinking also here towards alternative energy \u2013 whether they\u2019re going to be looking to diversifying their energy sources. So that\u2019s part of the issue as well. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s as simple as they want to do X, but they can\u2019t get to that point. Of course, there\u2019s also the skills aspect, and that was highlighted in this report as well.<\/p>\n
SIMON BROWN: I really want to touch on that, because of all this AI talk. And then the vast majority, 84%, expect headcount to grow, which for a continent of young people \u2013 and South Africa in particular, a country of high unemployment \u2013 that\u2019s a hugely important component where AI is important. But actually so is headcount. That seems contradictory, but not necessarily at all so.<\/p>\n
FRANK BLACKMORE: No. And I think the way most CEOs are seeing it now in Africa \u2013 and around the rest of the world as well \u2013 from this survey is there\u2019s going to be reskilling and repositioning of people.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t want to lose people who already understand the business, who are already part of that business.<\/p>\n
But if they can bring in a tool to augment a simple repetitive task, and can reskill people in sort of more valuable areas, that is the view that they\u2019re taking these days, along with obviously hiring more people that are tech-savvy, AI-type savvy people in order to be able to run that infrastructure in the background.<\/p>\n
Read:
\u2018No one at Sygnia will lose their job to AI\u2019 \u2013 Magda Wierzycka
AI will change jobs before it changes job descriptions
Young bankers to manage AI agents from start, Goldman exec says
AI may\u00a0force 11m workers into new jobs, McKinsey says
AI adoption is driving hiring, but mostly for senior roles<\/p>\n
SIMON BROWN: Yes, and using AI in many cases to do the boring necessary grunt work and let us get on with the real value. We are obviously in South Africa; we\u2019re talking from South Africa.<\/p>\n
So my final question is: It\u2019s a continental survey, of course, but where does South Africa sit within it? How are South African CEOs in terms of confidence relative to their peers \u2013 and Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and the like?<\/p>\n
FRANK BLACKMORE: Ironically we had the highest confidence of any region in Africa. Ninety percent of CEOs had confidence in the region. That also tells me a lot of strategy was kind of intra-African trade, regional type of trade \u2013 and obviously that was spurring that confidence, was supporting a lot of that confidence.<\/p>\n
We are also concerned with things like supply-chain end-to-end visibility. We know supply chains disrupt the business and there\u2019s a lot of focus in southern Africa on that end-to-end. What\u2019s actually happening, where are my goods at each point in time?<\/p>\n
Read:
DHL plans to invest \u20ac300m to expand logistics in Africa
Standard Bank directs R3.45bn to climate-smart agriculture
SA is revamping its ports<\/p>\n
Actually that\u2019s an investment area on the operational side for southern African businesses in order to understand that better. It goes along with things like risk management, strategic foresight and faster decision making, which are priorities that underpin the growth narrative of Southern Africa.<\/p>\n
SIMON BROWN: But great to see us confident. We\u2019ll leave it at that. Frank Blackmore, lead economist at KPMG, always appreciate the time.<\/p>\n
#Navigating #volatility #integration #regional #confidence #African #businesses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. SIMON BROWN: I\u2019m chatting with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[323,954,1616,14135,10584,4014,6810],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}