In the tech sector, 2025 was all about AI awareness and experimentation, the end of the hype cycle and a shift toward cautious, pragmatic decision-making. 2026 will be the year of AI execution, efficiency and tangible return on investment.
This is according to ICT industry leaders from Jem HR, Euphoria Telecom, Accelera Digital Group, Go Rentals, Qwerti, Dispose-IT and CommsCloud.
2025: The year reality hit
For many, the past year served as a wake-up call on the speed of technological change. Daniel Fabre, marketing lead at Jem HR, says the big story of 2025 was the realisation of just how real the AI wave is. While large enterprises struggled to turn awareness into operational change, agile organisations treated AI like a muscle to be built.
“The companies that won in 2025 were the ones that took on the challenge of adoption and built the capability to learn, unlearn and relearn faster than everyone else,” says Fabre.
This sentiment is echoed by Cliff de Wit, chief innovation officer at Accelera Digital Group (ADG), who believes the market has entered a phase of discernment. Companies stopped throwing capital at broad experimentation and started demanding that technology solve real problems this year, he says.
“What really stood out in 2025 was the definitive end of the hype cycle,” adds De Wit. “It wasn't enough to just have an AI strategy anymore. Businesses began demanding that these technologies solve actual problems rather than just serving as novelty additions to the tech stack.”
The outsourcing shift
For mid-tier businesses specifically, the sheer volume of change in 2025 became overwhelming. Craig Freer, director at Qwerti, says technology began moving faster than internal teams could realistically manage.
“2025 was the year where it simply became too much for the mid-tier business,” says Freer. “Companies were trying to manage hardware lifecycles, software sprawl, security layers and compliance, all while the cost structures and features of these systems kept shifting.”
He predicts that this pressure will drive a massive shift toward outsourcing among mid-size businesses in 2026. As cyber threats become smarter and AI-driven, businesses will look for trusted partners who can offer resilience and security maturity without the need to hire more staff.
“Cybersecurity has become central to business continuity,” Freer adds. “We expect more organisations to adopt outsourced models because they offer scalable IT costs rather than fixed overheads. For many, it comes down to staying agile, secure and confident that their technology is being managed in their best interests.”
Financial caution and hardware cycles
This period was also marked by financial caution. Evan Berger, director at Go Rentals, says tight credit and a volatile exchange rate pushed many businesses to delay capital investments.
“Across our customer base, the strongest theme was agility,” says Berger. “New ventures, unpredictable pipelines and AI-driven shifts made companies far more reluctant to lock themselves into long-term commitments.”
Berger believes that refresh cycles will continue to shorten as collaboration tools and AI workloads increase their resource demands, making older hardware obsolete faster.
The great clean-out
This rapid obsolescence has created a secondary challenge: what to do with the old equipment. Clayton Heldsinger, director at Dispose-IT, says 2025 was the year many organisations finally confronted the mountains of old hardware sitting in their storerooms.
“With Windows 10 support ending and heavier AI workloads arriving, upgrades became unavoidable,” Heldsinger says. “2026 is shaping up to be a major clean-out year. Companies have pushed refresh cycles as far as they could, and the performance gap between old devices and modern workloads is now too large to ignore.”
Heldsinger adds that mid-tier businesses are increasingly focused on the data security risks and value recovery linked to their disposals. At the same time, larger organisations have begun shifting slightly from recycling toward circularity as part of broader ESG efforts.
2026 trend: The efficiency trap
Looking ahead, a significant concern is that the rush for efficiency might damage customer relationships. Nic Laschinger, technology director at Euphoria Telecom, warns that 2026 might be remembered as the year customer experience metrics drop.
“I expect that in the rush to do ‘what we can’ in terms of implementing AI and other communication channels, many businesses will neglect the key elements of how this affects customers’ experiences,” says Laschinger.
He argues that while the trend of multichannel engagement will continue, most businesses have a reporting blind spot that prevents them from managing multiple channels effectively.
2026 trend: Specificity over generic AI
To avoid these pitfalls, businesses will move away from generic tools. De Wit predicts a significant shift toward specific, intelligent agents trained on an organisation's in-house content.
“Organisations are realising that standard vendor tooling, which relies on generic data scraped from the wider internet, has a ceiling,” explains De Wit. “To reach the next level of capability, businesses will start building and training agents on their own organisational content.”
2026 trend: The human element
Technology will also need to serve the workforce more effectively, particularly deskless workers.
“AI implementation will shift from a buzzword to a key performance indicator,” says Fabre. “Mobile assistants, predictive scheduling and dynamic workflow tools that actually help workers do their jobs better, not just faster, will begin to gain traction.”
2026 trend: Convergence of AI and IoT
Finally, the operational backbone of business is set to transform. Peter Walsh, managing director at CommsCloud, sees the convergence of AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) reshaping entire industries like logistics and manufacturing.
“2026 will be the year organisations expect their technology stacks to self-optimise, from autonomous failover networks to AI-assisted decision making built into operational workflows,” says Walsh.
He emphasises that cross-border interoperability will become a strategic priority as African supply chains become more interconnected.
“2026 will be defined by the convergence of AI and IoT as the backbone of operational efficiency,” concludes Walsh. “Businesses across Africa will prioritise real-time visibility, automation and cross-border continuity as they navigate an increasingly complex environment.”
