Egypt’s AI ecosystem is steadily on the rise, with Egypt ranking second in Africa and 56th worldwide in AI readiness according to the 2022 Government Artificial Intelligence Readiness Index. As more and more sectors and enterprises begin to adopt AI in their day-to-day operations in Egypt, we’re left with many questions: what industries are leading in AI adoption, what is their approach, and what specific use cases are gaining the most traction?

To get some answers, we caught up with Ahmed Mahmoud, co-founder and CEO of DXwand — an Egyptian-led regional B2B startup offering generative AI agent solutions designed to cater to the needs of myriad industries.

E: What industries would you say are leading AI adoption?

AM: In terms of willingness, financial services are surprisingly eager. The financial services sector is often perceived to be risk-averse and appreciates steadiness over innovation, yet they’re proving willing to adopt. But when it comes to procedural measures, things can get a little slow.

Education, on the other hand, is quick to adopt AI. There’s already added pressure [on the education sector], given that teachers and students around the globe are utilizing existing AI tools. Education was pushed, I would say, into adoption. The industry had no option — either leave control to teachers and students, or take hold of the narrative and offer its own solutions.

E: How does the financial sector adopt AI?

AM: In many ways — what we’ve witnessed, aside from customer service, is institutes veering towards agentic financial services. If you go to a chat bot and tell it your credit card got stolen, you’d expect it to tell you what to do or who to call. That’s not agentic customer service.

What agentic AI does is act straight away, just like an actual human would. In terms of business viability, this makes more sense. AI agents troubleshoot, reason, and take actions — and that’s what institutes are opting for. We also have generative insights, where upon providing a query, you’d receive dashboards on the go. Say, for example, you want to compare the sales volume of two branches for a specific product within a specific time period; you’d get the numbers, why sales are fluctuating, what the reason behind that may be — whether in policy changes or otherwise.

It digs deeper into all the available enterprise knowledge to provide the information you need to take action. This proves especially beneficial for financial service enterprises that operate on a magnitude of data.

Another thing is sales, the AI agent helps with categorizing the leads, and helps the sales agent personalize their approach based on real data. It essentially conducts a preliminary KYC (Know Your Customer), which already saves the sales agent at least a week’s worth of work.

E: By contrast, what industries have been the most resistant to AI solutions?

AM: Healthcare has its concerns, and that’s understandable. After all, AI isn’t flawless, and the medical field is a very sensitive one. You can’t hold AI accountable for any mistakes made in the field. Healthcare isn’t against its adoption, but it's adopted in less sensitive areas. There are limitations by design. Similarly, legal industries follow a similar approach — adopting AI in a limited and specific context.

E: What are the most common use cases for AI you would say?

AM: We recently went live with the education ministry in Kuwait, and it came as a surprise. Prior to adoption, we would hold sessions and training programs to acquaint teams with the system. With the Kuwaiti education ministry, we didn’t have to do anything — it just took off — they were self-sufficient from the get-go. I’ve been working in tech for years and I’d never seen a system adopted this fast before.

Use cases vary; students use our AI to deepen their understanding of classes, gain in-depth knowledge, and learn on their own terms. If students want a mock-up exam, AI can create it and assess their performance. AI can then dig deeper into the students’ weaker areas. For teachers, they can utilize our tools to create custom-content that aligns with official curricula, something general LLMs cannot do. The tools we provided for the ministry allow teachers to create anything from gamified tasks to workshops drawing straight from the curricula.

E: What surprised you the most about how Egyptian companies implemented AI?

AM: SMEs in Egypt are more courageous when it comes to adoption. They’re hungry for it. This agentic technology was incredibly expensive in its earliest days, but when these prices started dropping and became more accessible, and when companies like DXwand began building further solutions into their platform, it became an affordable option. Since 2018, we’ve been working with different enterprises — and this year we started servicing SMEs. Six or seven out of 10 SMEs are willing to try out agentic AI. It’s a different story for the big enterprises; that rate is lower. This proves that AI’s impact on the economy in Egypt will be substantial, especially when these SMEs grow and become more scalable.

E: What challenges have you faced when implementing AI in Egypt?

AM: Regulations are one key challenge. There aren’t any AI regulations that I know of. There’s no guidebook on what could be done and what couldn’t. Companies risk suddenly finding themselves in violation of newly introduced rules that basically prevent them from utilizing what they’ve already adopted. That’s a very high risk. Many companies remain averse to AI adoption until regulations are put in place. Businesses are eager to keep up pace with developments, but regulatory uncertainty is holding some of them back. Exchange rates and credit card restrictions have at times made implementations more difficult.

E: For AI adopters, how do they calculate that return on investment?

AM: It depends on the use case. In cases like procurement automation — which follows a standard cycle and is largely administrative — we typically automate around 80% of the workflow. The cost savings are immediately clear. Consider a telecom company looking to build a cell tower. The procurement cycle for that might take a year, and a majority of that is administrative again. It’s not just time lost — it’s about the cost of that time.

E: Which AI applications have the highest adoption potential among Egyptian businesses within the next 3-5 years?

AM: Tools that leverage AI for insights and analytics — whether in real estate, marketing, financial services — are likely to see the strongest uptake. Customer service is also poised for significant transformation, with automation and personalization becoming key drivers.

E: What advice would you give Egyptian business leaders who are just beginning to explore AI adoption?

AM: I’m not one for advice, but if I were starting a business today, I would start early, do things fast, and implement AI quickly. I wouldn’t wait by any means. I could use AI to operate any aspect of my business — I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of mental energy on recruitment or outsourcing.

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