McKinsey's $5tn agentic-AI retail call reaches Zambia

Analysis

LUSAKA — Agentic AI is the McKinsey-named technology shift the consultancy says could unlock $5 trillion in retail revenue by 2030, and Zambia is in the implications zone.

The report, produced by McKinsey & Company with the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and carried by African Business, argues that agentic AI — software that plans and takes multi-step actions on a shopper's behalf — is the next platform shift in retail. The upshot for Zambia: the country's mostly offline, mid-sized retail sector is not the target audience, but it is the next-door audience, reached through the same mobile-money rails that already define Zambian commerce.

What the report actually says

The McKinsey/ICSC analysis defines agentic AI as systems that go beyond chat — they plan a task, take actions across multiple tools, and complete the task with limited human input. In retail, that means an agent that can compare prices across stores, place an order, schedule the delivery, handle the return and update the budget — all on instruction from one prompt.

The $5 trillion figure is a global gross opportunity by 2030, spread across faster product discovery, lower cart abandonment, smarter assortment planning and labour reallocation. Research from the same report shows the bulk of the value compounds in markets where retail is already digitised. The data also shows the secondary wave — markets where mobile commerce is dominant — comes later and has a different shape.

Africa's fast-growing retail sector faces a stark choice: adapt quickly or risk being left behind as agentic AI rewrites global commerce.

— McKinsey & Company and ICSC, How AI is rewriting the rules of African retail, May 2026

Why Zambia's retail looks different

Zambian retail is bimodal. At one end sit the formal chains — Shoprite, Pick n Pay, Game, Spar, Choppies and the local players — which collectively hold a minority of total retail spend. At the other end sit the open markets, township shops and informal traders, which capture most household spend on food, clothing and household basics.

Mobile money is the bridge. Airtel Money and MTN Mobile Money together process more transaction volume than the formal banking system in any given month, according to Bank of Zambia payment-systems data. That rail is where any agentic-AI product targeting Zambian shoppers ends up — not via card processors, but via the same USSD and app channels that already move kwacha around the country.

What Zambian retailers should do this year

The read here is practical. Three moves are defensible for a Zambian retailer in 2026, and none of them requires running a large language model in-house. The first is structured-data hygiene: making sure product names, prices, stock and store hours are machine-readable wherever they are published. Agentic systems read public data; the cleaner the data, the more likely the agent surfaces the retailer.

The second is mobile-money discoverability. Mobile-money menus are the equivalent of an app store for many Zambian shoppers. Being on the right merchant menus, with the right keywords, matters more than a website refresh. The third is payments resilience: agents will fail more transactions than humans because they probe edge cases. A retailer whose payment integration handles partial failures gracefully will win the small-ticket repeat business.

What this means for landlords and shopping-centre operators is different. Foot traffic remains the asset, but the routing of that foot traffic is increasingly being decided by an algorithm a shopper consulted at home. Analysis of US and UK shopping-centre data in the report demonstrates that centres which lean into the agentic loop — clear listings, clean catalogues, integrated payments — capture more of the secondary share than centres which treat the AI layer as a marketing afterthought.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions Zambian retailers and shopping-centre operators have been asking about the McKinsey/ICSC scenario. Short answers follow, drawn from the report and the country's own retail data.

What is agentic AI?

In short, agentic AI is software that plans and takes multi-step actions on a user's behalf. The answer is that it goes beyond chat: it can compare options, transact, schedule and follow up across multiple systems. The key is autonomy — the system completes a task without the user having to take each next step manually.

How does the $5tn figure break down?

Simply put, the $5 trillion is a global gross opportunity by 2030, not an African-only number. According to the McKinsey/ICSC analysis, the value compounds in four areas: discovery, transaction, fulfilment and loyalty. Data from the same report shows the bulk of value accrues in markets where retail is already digitised.

Why is Zambian retail different from the US and EU?

Zambian retail is mobile-money-first and informally-distributed. In other words, most household spend moves through markets and township shops via Airtel Money and MTN Mobile Money rails, not card processors. The answer is that the agentic loop reaches Zambian shoppers through mobile-money menus before it reaches them through web checkout.

How can Zambian retailers prepare?

The key is three moves: structured-data hygiene (machine-readable product, price, stock), mobile-money discoverability (right merchant menus, right keywords) and payments resilience (graceful handling of partial failures). Research from the McKinsey/ICSC report shows none of these requires running a model in-house.

Who is McKinsey and what is ICSC?

Analysis from McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy, sits behind much of the corporate AI-investment thesis circulating since 2023. The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) is the trade body representing shopping-centre owners, developers and retailers worldwide. Evidence from their joint report demonstrates that they are interested in retail-format-level impact, not pure tech-stack adoption.

What to watch

Two signals over the next twelve months. The first is mobile-money operator behaviour: when Airtel Money or MTN Mobile Money formally surfaces an agent-style assistant inside the USSD or app menu, Zambian retail's agentic layer effectively launches. The second is large-format announcements: when one of the South African-headquartered chains operating in Zambia publishes a structured-data API for its Zambian stores, that is the move to follow.

Sources

McKinsey & Company and ICSC report carried by African Business: How AI is rewriting the rules of African retail. McKinsey & Company. International Council of Shopping Centers. Bank of Zambia payment systems statistics.