Kenyan organisations are increasingly embracing artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in customer service and software development, as they deploy practical strategies to overcome financial and skills-related challenges, according to a new report.
The report, titled “The AI Privacy Equation: Youthful Innovations Meets Privacy Leadership in Kenya,” reveals that 96% of organisations in Kenya have already embarked on their AI journey notwithstanding barriers such as high costs at 43.2%, limited trained personnel at 40.9%, and inadequate technical expertise.
Most of the adoption has been driven by pragmatic, high-impact strategies with quantifiable business benefits. Customer service emerged as the highest AI investment priority, with 54.8% of the respondents naming it as their focus area. The second spot was occupied by software development at 51.2%, while marketing optimisation came in third with 36.2% because both had palpable returns on investment and helped enhance internal AI capabilities.
Rather than investing heavily in costly in-house AI development-a strategy pursued by only 11.3% of the other organizations-most businesses are embracing cost-effective sourcing strategies. These involve custom AI solutions at 23.6%, AI embedded within enterprise software also at 23.6%, and hybrid models at 22.9% that make advanced AI tools accessible even to smaller enterprises.
Accordingly, organizations are focused on training in AI skills to bridge this gap. The report notes that data analysis and interpretation is the most targeted area at 63.1%, followed by AI literacy (54.5%) and prompt engineering for generative AI tools (44.2%).
With 24.9% of organisations citing a shortage of in-house expertise as their biggest challenge, structured training programs are being rolled out to blend technical skills with practical applications. Additional training investments include process optimisation (33.6%), technical integration (32.6%), and AI ethics (30.2%), ensuring responsible and efficient AI adoption.
Kenya is also ahead in data privacy governance, with 94% of organisations having full-time privacy officers or teams, the highest number in African markets surveyed. Since integrating AI technologies, 82.1% of organisations have strengthened privacy safeguards, while 59.5% reported major improvements.
The Kenya Data Protection Act has greatly improved awareness of compliance, as 64.2% of organisations have indicated better regulatory compliance. News media is the main source of awareness at 69%, followed by government websites at 64.8%, and internal training at 59.7%. Notably, 53.8% of companies now allocate more than 20% of their IT budgets to privacy protection.
The report also underscores Kenya’s youth-driven AI transformation, noting that 51.5% of respondents are aged 21–30 and 29.2% are aged 31–40. This youthful leadership coupled with a 34.9% self-employment rate is steering organisations toward more dynamic, tech-forward AI strategies.
The study, conducted by Arion Research LLC and sponsored by software firm Zoho, surveyed 363 business professionals across various industries in Kenya between June and July 2025.
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