How AI is disrupting Africa’s creative industries and what creators can do about it

“I’M SORRY, but I think you’re aware your voice talent job is going to disappear.”

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"I'M SORRY, but I think you're aware your voice talent job is going to disappear." I won't lie, when African creative industries expert Marie Lora-Mungai delivered this blunt assessment during our recent African Tech Roundup Podcast conversation, I felt gut-punched.

Our exchange came in the wake of a LinkedIn post Lora-Mungai put out a week ago issuing a stark message to African filmmakers about AI disruption-one that struck uncomfortably close to home.

"While you're spending hours in the edit suite, writing grant applications, or attending festivals, AI has already rewritten the script for the entire industry," she warned.

The post went viral, precisely because it articulated what many creatives fear but few appear willing to confront.

Senegalese filmmaker Hussein Dembel Sow's response crystallised the paradox facing African creatives: "Across the continent, we're still building the frameworks for modern content industries-film, advertising, media, design.

Yet at the same time, those frameworks are being upended in real time by AI. It's not just a disruption. It's a systemic shift unfolding while we're still laying the groundwork." As someone who, by my own admission, has "probably made more money as a voiceover artist than any one thing" in my eclectic career, Lora-Mungai's message was the proverbial knife that was "halfway in, now going all the way!" Personal confrontation During our subsequent African Tech Roundup chat, I shared how two European startups had recently approached me about representing my voice in digital marketplaces - platforms designed so that clients would never need me in an actual studio again. I'd turned both down, clinging perhaps to the comfort of traditional practice.