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Paper short abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa faces poor education, unemployment, skills gaps despite enrollment gains. AI multiplies development via adaptive tools, job matching, inclusive tech—but risks divides, bias. The Study finds conditional boosts; AI needs human-centered policies, infrastructure, co-design for equity.

Paper long abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa faces enduring challenges in education, youth employability, and social inclusion, marked by low learning outcomes, skills mismatches, unemployment, and persistent inequalities despite improved school enrolment. Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerges as a potential development multiplier, amplifying existing investments by enhancing productivity, personalizing education through adaptive learning and tutoring systems, improving job matching and skills forecasting, and supporting marginalized groups via assistive technologies and inclusive services. However, empirical evidence on AI's effectiveness in these domains remains fragmented, often lacking contextual sensitivity to SSA's socio-economic realities, institutional constraints, and informal systems, with risks of exacerbating digital divides, algorithmic bias, and inequalities. Guided by human capital theory, the capability approach, and sociotechnical systems theory, this qualitative study—integrating systematic literature review and phenomenological analysis—examines how AI functions as a multiplier, shaped by contextual factors like infrastructure, literacy, and governance. Findings indicate AI enhances efficiency, reach, personalization, and system-level transformation, yet its benefits are conditional on supportive conditions; weak enabling environments can reinforce exclusion. Ultimately, AI holds promise for inclusive development but requires human-centred policies, investments in digital infrastructure and literacy, strengthened institutional capacity, contextual co-design with local stakeholders, and integration as a complement to human investments, prioritizing equity, ethics, and sustainable capability expansion.