Nine in ten large South African organisations now use artificial intelligence (AI), yet far fewer are convinced it delivers business value, according to The SA AI Index 2026.
The third edition of the annual study on AI uptake in SA was conducted by World Wide Worx in partnership with Altron digital Business.
The study is based on a telephonic survey of 100 decision-makers at South African organisations with more than 200 employees, conducted in October 2026.
The findings build on the inaugural 2024 and 2025 editions of the study, which tracked early corporate enthusiasm for generative AI tools alongside mounting concerns over governance, skills shortages and return on investment across SA’s enterprise sector.
It shows that the share of large organisations using AI in some form has doubled in two years, from 45% in 2024 to 67% in 2025 and 93% in 2026.
Over the same period, the share of users rating its impact on productivity as positive has fallen dramatically: from 96% to 83% in 2025, and now to 51%. Positive ratings for competitiveness fell from 86% in 2025 to 37% this year, and for customer service from 66% to 38%.
The study introduces the SA AI Index, a single score from zero to 100 that measures how far an organisation has integrated AI into its business.
The Index is built from five pillars. Organisations score highest on deployment (43.8) and adoption (41.8), followed by workforce (37.2) and governance (32.0). Value scores lowest, at 16.6, and it is held down by measurement as much as by results: 73% of organisations have no tools to assess whether AI delivers value, and 71% cannot put a figure on cost savings from AI.
Principals of the study say this means going beyond AI tools: running AI in core processes, under formal control, with its value measured and the workforce adapted to it. The average large South African organisation scores 34.3, meaning it has covered about a third of that distance.
“AI has gone from novelty to normal in South African business in just two years,” says Arthur Goldstuck, CEO of World Wide Worx. “But using AI and getting value from it are very different things. The early adopters were enthusiasts who went looking for gains. Today almost everyone uses AI, often in a shallow way, and many organisations are discovering that a language model on every desk does not automatically translate into business results.”
According to the backers of the study, where AI runs deeper, the picture changes. Among the 30% of organisations with AI operating in a live business process, 80% report a positive effect on productivity, against 44% of those still experimenting and 6% of those using AI only on an ad hoc basis. More than half of organisations (52%) remain at the experimental stage.
“Every boardroom is talking about AI, and the interest is real,” says Craig Stewart, managing director of Altron Digital Business. “But this research shows the gap between having AI and having it at the heart of the business. The organisations seeing real gains have taken AI into production, built it into their processes and put measures in place to track what it returns. The next wave of value will come from this arena.”
A companion measure in the study, the SA AI Frontier Index, asks a different question: how far organisations use AI to do new things, rather than doing existing work faster. Here the average organisation scores 20.3, a fifth of the way to the frontier, and only 8% score 50 or more.
Many organisations are testing or using advanced technologies like predictive AI and machine learning, but only 17% have AI live in functions that change what the business makes or how it runs. This includes new products, software development, quality control or managing the supply chain. Only 14% have configured or fine-tuned an AI model for their own needs in this way, and 7% have built their own.
“The AI Frontier Index shows where the next opportunity lies,” says Stewart. “Most organisations are using AI to make existing work faster, and that has real value.
“But the organisations that will pull ahead are those using AI to create new products and services, run their operations and supply chains differently, and build AI capability of their own. Very few South African organisations have reached that frontier yet, which means the opportunity is still wide open.”
Scores rise with size. Organisations with more than 1 000 employees average 42.6 on the AI Index, against 33 for those with 501 to 1 000 employees and 28 for those with 201 to 500. Only 13% of organisations score 60 or more.
“The SA AI Index gives South African organisations a benchmark for the first time,” says Goldstuck. “A score by itself means little, but we can now measure movement off the 2026 baseline.”
Goldstuck will present further findings from the study in an AI Masterclass at Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town on 17 November, with Doug Woolley, Altron Digital Business Executive for Sales, and Theo Spickett, Executive for Data and AI. The full report will be made available online on 23 November.
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