AI literacy is no longer the preserve of developers and data scientists. According to Pnet’s Job Market Trends Report for March 2026, released on Monday, competence in AI tools is fast becoming a baseline expectation across South African white-collar roles – from finance and office administration to education and business management.
The report traces two distinct waves of AI-skills demand locally. The first, between 2017 and 2019, was confined to deeply technical roles. The second, triggered by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022, pushed adoption into the mainstream. Pnet identifies 2023 as the inflection point at which growth in non-technical AI competencies began outpacing growth among AI engineers and developers.
IT remains the dominant sector for AI usage, but Pnet’s data shows business management, education and training, office administration, and finance are among the functions most exposed to AI tools. Within technical roles, machine learning, natural language processing, AI tool development and chatbot development dominate. Among non-technical users, the most commonly cited tools are ChatGPT, Dext and Zapier.
Whether any of this translates into a reliable signal for employers is another question.
Rob Godlonton, CEO of management and digital consultancy iqbusiness, told TechCentral that his company now treats AI fluency as a cross-cutting expectation rather than a specialist skill.
Harder problem
“All roles are increasingly becoming AI-enabled roles. Across the business, including support functions, we are seeing strong adoption of AI tools to enhance productivity and effectiveness. So, while the depth of technical AI expertise may differ, the expectation to engage with AI is consistent across all roles,” he said.
Iqbusiness runs internal training programmes, cross-department sessions to share practical use cases and has embedded AI tools into existing workflows – a pattern mirrored across much of the local consulting and professional services industry.
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But Godlonton’s comments also hint at the harder problem employers are grappling with: how to distinguish genuine AI competence from CV decoration. Iqbusiness assesses AI competency during hiring, he said, but does not treat it as a strict prerequisite. “We place equal, if not greater emphasis on a candidate’s attitude towards learning and curiosity, and their willingness to embrace and evolve with AI as part of their day-to-day work.”
Prioritising disposition over demonstrated skill reflects a market still working out what “AI proficiency” means in practice. Listing ChatGPT on a CV is trivial; meaningfully integrating it into a finance workflow, an HR process or a client deliverable is not. For now, few employers appear to have settled methods for telling the two apart.
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Pnet, for its part, has a commercial interest in the trend it is describing – AI-skills demand drives job listings – and the report does not quantify how much of the shift reflects genuine workflow change versus employers hedging their bets in listings. What the data does make clear is that candidates who can credibly demonstrate AI fluency, rather than merely claim it, are likely to have the edge as the market matures. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
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