Binance says African businesses that move quickly on agentic artificial intelligence (AI), systems that act rather than just respond to prompts, could lead adoption rather than merely catch up.

Agentic AI refers to software that carries out multi-step tasks, makes real-time decisions or monitors systems continuously without a human approving each step, as opposed to AI tools that respond only when prompted. Gartner forecasts that 40 percent of enterprise applications will be integrated with task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5 percent in 2025. In South Africa specifically, one of the continent’s largest digital asset markets, Grand View Research’s Horizon Databook projects the AI agents sector will grow at a compound annual rate of 52.3 percent between 2026 and 2033, reaching $1.18 billion in revenue.

Binance points to its own platform as an example of the approach it is recommending. In August 2026, the exchange launched Agent OS, a developer platform that connects AI applications to trading, market data, wallet, payment and on-chain functions under permissions set by the user, with each agent running through a separate subaccount rather than having open access to a user’s full holdings.

“We have done it before,” said Larry Cooke of Binance Africa, drawing a comparison with the continent’s earlier shift to mobile money instead of branch banking. Jeff Li, Binance’s vice president of product, said the platform “gives developers and traders the standardised interfaces they need” to build AI-driven trading tools.

Cooke said the underlying lesson, building permissioning and boundaries in from the start rather than retrofitting them, applies regardless of which company’s tools a business ultimately uses. He added that education for both developers and end users needs to keep pace with deployment if the sector is to grow safely.