AI literacy is no longer a niche skill confined to tech specialists. A fresh analysis from Pnet’s March 2026 Job Market Trends Report reveals that competence with AI tools is now a baseline expectation across South African white‑collar jobs—from finance and office administration to education and business management.
The report charts two distinct waves of AI‑skill demand. The first, spanning 2017‑2019, was limited to highly technical positions such as data scientists and machine‑learning engineers. The second wave, ignited by the public rollout of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022, has pushed AI adoption into the mainstream. Pnet identifies 2023 as the inflection point when growth in non‑technical AI competencies overtook that of traditional AI engineers.
While IT departments still dominate AI usage statistics, the data shows that business management, education and training, office administration, and finance are among the functions most exposed to AI tools. In technical roles, the focus remains on machine‑learning, natural‑language processing, and chatbot development. By contrast, non‑technical users most frequently cite ChatGPT, Dext, and Zapier as the tools they rely on daily.
Rob Godlonton, chief executive of the management‑and‑digital consultancy iqbusiness, told TechCentral that his firm now treats AI fluency as a cross‑cutting expectation rather than a specialized skill set. “All roles are increasingly becoming AI‑enabled roles,” he explained. “Across the business, including support functions, we see strong adoption of AI tools to boost productivity and effectiveness. The depth of technical expertise may differ, but the expectation to engage with AI is consistent.”
AI Literacy in South Africa’s Job Market
To translate this trend into practice, iqbusiness runs internal training programmes and cross‑department workshops that showcase practical AI use cases. The firm has also embedded AI tools directly into existing workflows—a pattern echoed across many local consulting and professional‑services firms. Yet Godlonton admits that gauging genuine AI competence remains a thorny issue for recruiters.
He notes that iqbusiness assesses AI competency during hiring, but does not make it a strict prerequisite. “We place equal, if not greater, emphasis on a candidate’s attitude toward learning, curiosity, and willingness to evolve with AI as part of day‑to‑day work,” he said. This reflects a broader market still defining what AI proficiency truly means in practice.
Listing ChatGPT on a résumé is now trivial; integrating it meaningfully into a finance workflow, an HR process, or a client deliverable is another matter entirely. For now, few employers have settled on reliable methods to separate genuine skill from mere buzzword usage.
Pnet, which benefits commercially from the surge in AI‑skill listings, does not quantify how much of the shift signifies real workflow transformation versus employers simply hedging their bets in job ads. Nonetheless, the data makes one thing clear: candidates who can credibly demonstrate AI fluency—rather than merely claim it—will enjoy a competitive edge as the market matures.
As South African organisations continue to embed AI across departments, the pressure on job seekers to move beyond superficial mentions of AI tools will only intensify. Employers are beginning to value curiosity and a growth mindset alongside technical know‑how, signaling a new era where AI literacy is a universal workplace language rather than a specialist dialect.