How to Remain Relevant in the Ever-Changing Communications Industry in the Era of AI.

How to Remain Relevant in the Ever-Changing Communications Industry in the Era of AI. A Message to Students

For nearly three million years—at least since the appearance of the genus Homo, whose members developed larger brains, tool-making abilities, and more human-like body proportions—humans passed down knowledge almost entirely through oral communication.

Because there was no reliable medium for documentation and transmission, survival knowledge—skills such as when to plant, which plants are poisonous, what is edible, and how to make fire for roasting hunted meat—was taught orally and transmitted through observation and folk storytelling from one generation to the next.

The enormous challenge of passing down ideas and knowledge orally was that, as a message was transmitted from one generation to the next, it often became twisted, changed, and distorted; the final message frequently failed to convey the intent or meaning of the original. This left little room for cumulative innovation. Hence, it took our ancestors more than 2.5 million years for innovation to move from simple stone tools to agriculture and domestication (the Neolithic Revolution).

That developmental constraint was largely overcome with the invention of writing by the Mesopotamians about 5,000 years ago (around 3200 BCE). Writing systems—like Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs—allowed messages to persist beyond memory; they shaped early innovation, enabled the construction of complex civilizations, and facilitated trade. Civilization and innovation accelerated because writing let humans record, accumulate, and transmit knowledge across generations without losing accuracy. Innovation became cumulative rather than starting from scratch each generation.

Writing — the first multiplier of innovation

From about 3200 BCE until the advent of movable-type printing in the mid-15th century CE (around 1440), literacy remained a scarce and powerful skill. To be an elite in that long span, you typically had to know how to read and write—written communication was an invaluable and highly sought-after ability.

As communication technologies evolved, different skills became crucial for effective transmission. The printing press (c. 1440), the electric telegraph (19th century), and broadcast media—radio and television (early–mid 20th century)—each changed who could speak to many people. Yet for a long time many of these media were controlled by elites: rulers, religious institutions, wealthy merchants, and established publishers. Ordinary people were often consumers rather than producers of public ideas, so literacy alone did not guarantee wide reach.

A major shift began in the late 20th century: the internet and the World Wide Web (1980s–1990s) started to democratize access to information. Social media, from the early 2000s onward, accelerated that democratization. Suddenly, individuals could publish ideas, opinions, and creative work with far less permission from traditional gatekeepers. For this liberated medium to be valuable, new practical skills became crucial.

During the rise of social media, skills such as digital copywriting, content creation, digital marketing, and social media management emerged. Those who mastered these skills became highly sought after. While some built businesses from the exposure their communication produced, others became influencers and community leaders.

I began with the early days of oral communication to show how humans, throughout history, have had to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of communication and its transmission media. My point is not merely that you should adopt new communication skills, but that you must also understand, deeply, the medium through which your ideas will propagate.

Now, a new technology—the AI era—is upon us.

AI as a Student’s Communication Co-Creator

To understand what this new era means, think of AI as a studio partner who never sleeps. While you might once have needed a whole night to draft a proposal or polish an essay, AI can hand you three versions in seconds. It is speed and scale combined. But remember that speed is not the same as truth, and scale is not the same as meaning. That is where you, the communicator, remain indispensable.

If writing made literacy the elite skill of the last 5,000 years, then AI literacy will be the elite skill of this century. Those who know how to guide it — to direct its tone, challenge its biases, and refine its outputs — will stand apart.

How Students Can Remain Relevant

Look back: every leap in communication demanded a new kind of mastery. Writing demanded literacy; the printing press demanded access; social media demanded digital fluency. Now AI demands something deeper: the ability to work with a machine that thinks in probability, not meaning.

To thrive, you must practice three kinds of discipline:

The discipline of shaping: Learning how to give AI precise direction, the way an orator once shaped words to fit an audience.

Prompts, then, are not casual instructions. They are the new ink, the new parchment, the new printing press lever. To remain relevant, students must learn to wield them carefully. Hence, prompt engineering is crucial in your journey as a communicator.

The discipline of judgment: Fact-checking, editing, and choosing wisely which messages to release. Without this, you risk becoming a megaphone for errors.

The discipline of human storytelling: The empathy to know what matters, the intuition to sense what resonates. These are things no algorithm can replicate.

Those who master these disciplines will not just use AI as a tool but as an amplifier. They will turn a long essay into a sharp video, a single story into a thread of posts, an idea into a campaign — always with human polish guiding the output.

AI as a Medium of Communication

But AI is not only your helper. Like the printing press, like radio, it is also a medium in its own right. Imagine converting your class project into an interactive chatbot that answers questions in your voice. Imagine publishing a piece of writing and, within hours, having it translated into ten languages, each tailored to a culture. Imagine creating an AI agent as a social media manager that’ll help you manage multiple social media accounts.

This is not the future; it is already happening. And the students who see AI not just as a typewriter, but as a broadcast channel, will find their voices reaching farther than any generation before them.

My message to you, young communicator

From oral storytelling around a fire to hieroglyphs on clay tablets, from radio waves to the endless scroll of social feeds, one truth endures: the medium changes, and with it, the skills of relevance. Today, AI is the latest leap. It offers speed, scale, and new formats. But it also asks for judgment, ethics, and care. To remain relevant, you must not only learn the tools but also preserve the human spark: empathy, credibility, and meaning. Treat AI not as your replacement, but as your collaborator — your most tireless co-creator in the long story of human communication.

The intersection of AI, health tech, and comms; fresh voices shaping Africa’s industries

By Azubuike Emmanuel

For many, it might be difficult to begin to imagine how AI, health tech, and the media intersect.

For obvious reasons, AI, driven by the big multi-billion dollar companies, has been marketed as a futuristic productivity tool, and as a super-intelligent personal assistant that can bootstrap our productivity. The over-promotion of AI as a productivity enhancer, or miracle tool, appears to have buried other intricate values that this technology, when used appropriately, could unlock — values with the potential to solve or help solve one of the world’s biggest problems: inadequate healthcare.

In Africa, a continent of more than 1.5 billion people, nearly half of its population does not have adequate access to healthcare. Most countries on the continent allocate less than the WHO’s recommended 15% of a nation’s budget to healthcare. But underfunding is not the only issue plaguing Africa’s health systems.

According to WHO data, there are more than 10,000 patients to one doctor in some countries — well over the global standard of 1,000 to one doctor. The insufficiency of doctors has led to numerous issues, from pregnant women not receiving the medical attention they deserve during delivery, to doctors’ exhaustion from working long hours amid little pay.

But how can AI help solve Africa’s pitiable healthcare challenges?

AI Assisting African Doctors

Earlier this year, Google unveiled an upgraded version of its experimental medical chatbot, the Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer (AMIE), which marks a significant leap in diagnostic capabilities.

By analyzing rashes photographed with smartphones and other medical imagery, AMIE can diagnose and interpret associated medical conditions with superior diagnostic accuracy compared to human primary-care physicians.

Speaking about the potential use of AMIE, Eleni Linos, Director of Stanford University’s Center for Digital Health, notes that systems integrating images and clinical information “bring us closer to an AI assistant that mirrors how a clinician actually thinks.”

This could be of immense help to the severely understaffed medical sector in Africa. Thankfully, some Africans are already at the forefront of developing AI-powered solutions that alleviate the challenges the continent’s health sector faces.

A typical example is Egemba Chinonso Fidelis, popularly known as Aproko Doctor, who — until launching AwaDoc — had been using his content to break down medical situations through humor and storytelling. With AwaDoc, the health influencer is taking it a step further, ensuring that Africans have direct access to quality medical advice right from their mobile phones.

An AI-powered healthcare platform accessible via WhatsApp — used by over 51 million Nigerians — AwaDoc can be used for symptom checking, medical advice, and as a reliable alternative to self-diagnosis. This makes preliminary healthcare quick, dependable, and accessible by leveraging the widespread familiarity and penetration of WhatsApp, bypassing the need for new apps.

In Senegal, Moustapha Cissé, a former AI research scientist at Google and Facebook; Papa Sow, former CEO of MTN Guinea; and Hosam Mattar, former Chief Medical Officer for AXA, successfully raised $10 million for Kera Health, an AI-powered integrated platform that digitises core services such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs), pharmacy and prescription data, and lab results.

Qme, an Egyptian B2B SaaS startup that builds AI-powered tools to improve customer service processes in healthcare, is on a mission to replace manual phone-based booking in hospitals with a more digitalised appointment system.

Using Qme, founded by Maged Negm, a former executive at Orange Egypt who has raised $3 million, patients can book doctor consultations, lab tests, or procedures digitally via web, app, or kiosk.

Although WideBot AI, founded in Egypt but now based in Saudi Arabia by Mohamed Nabil, offers a wide range of services by building enterprise-level language solutions for corporations and government institutions in the Middle East and North Africa, it has also raised $3 million to develop AQL Mind, an Arabic large language model. As part of its healthcare services, WideBot helps automate patient query responses, gather patient feedback, and simplify omnichannel appointment booking.

There are numerous other AI startups in the health sector solving some of the continent’s most pressing problems. However, the reality is that for these solutions to have impact and reach the African population, firms must be able to communicate their mission and vision, as well as their use cases and benefits, in the most comprehensible way possible.

For AwaDoc, Aproko Doctor is utilizing his storytelling expertise across his various social media channels to communicate and sell the AI-powered service. However, others may have to rely heavily on communicators — content creators, storytellers, journalists, and creatives — to convey their products and services to the African population.

Bridging the Gap Between Storytellers and AI Companies

But here lies the gap. While AI-powered firms are rising across Africa, there is still a disconnect between these innovators and the storytellers, content creators, and journalists who should be translating the technology for everyday people.

Are today’s storytellers aware that despite skyrocketing adoption of AI, consumers still have less trust in products or services labeled as ‘AI-powered’?

According to a recent study published in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, describing a product as using AI actually lowers a customer’s intention to buy it.

In an interview with CNN, Dogan Gursoy, one of the study’s authors and the Taco Bell Distinguished Professor of Hospitality Business Management at Washington State University, stated:

“We looked at vacuum cleaners, TVs, consumer services, health services. In every single case, the intention to buy or use the product or service was significantly lower whenever we mentioned AI in the product description.”

Hence, there is a growing belief that a gap still exists between this new technology and the storytellers whose responsibility it is to communicate to the public how AI should be used — especially in sensitive areas like healthcare.

That is precisely why TalkComms, a Pan-African hub created to empower the next generation of communication leaders across the continent, is hosting its inaugural summit on November 29, 2025, at Emerald Hall, The Zone, Gbagada, in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub.

According to the convener, Oluwasegun Ogundairo, the summit is expected to help students and young professionals understand not only the skills needed to use AI and other emerging technologies, but also how to communicate these technological advances to the people in ways that foster trust and adoption.

My message to you, young communicator

From oral storytelling around a fire to hieroglyphs on clay tablets, from radio waves to the endless scroll of social feeds, one truth endures: the medium changes, and with it, the skills of relevance. Today, AI is the latest leap. It offers speed, scale, and new formats. But it also asks for judgment, ethics, and care. To remain relevant, you must not only learn the tools but also preserve the human spark: empathy, credibility, and meaning. Treat AI not as your replacement, but as your collaborator — your most tireless co-creator in the long story of human communication.