Mduduzi Sibisi | Product Head | New Leaf Technologies | mail me |
New technology is putting training creation into the hands of employees and subject experts. Meanwhile, the global corporate e-learning market is heading towards US$335 billion.
The market is forecast to more than triple in size this decade as employers face growing pressure to continuously reskill their workforces. However, this surge in demand is also exposing a fundamental problem. Organisations need to create and update training content faster than traditional Learning and Development (L&D) models can often accommodate.
How AI is decentralising corporate training
The global corporate e-learning market was valued at US$104.3 billion (approximately R1.66 trillion) in 2024. According to Grand View Research, it is forecast to reach US$335 billion (R5.34 trillion) by 2030. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 21.7%.
Digital transformation and the growing need for workforce upskilling are among the primary drivers.
South Africa is experiencing the same shift. The country’s corporate education and skills development market was worth an estimated US$2.055 billion (approximately R32.8 billion) in 2025. It is forecast to reach US$3.374 billion (R53.8 billion) by 2031. Meanwhile, self-paced digital learning is expected to record the strongest growth in learner volumes.
Official figures underline the scale of investment already flowing into skills development. South Africa collected R24.1 billion through the Skills Development Levy in 2024/25. This represented a 7.8% increase in a single year and growth of 138.8% since 2011/12. Of the latest annual total, approximately R19.3 billion went to Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).
Yet as workplace learning increases in volume and frequency, organisations are facing growing pressure to rethink how they create training materials. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is decentralising corporate training, giving employees greater opportunities to turn their expertise into practical learning resources.
Bringing training creation closer to the experts
Companies have traditionally relied on their L&D and instructional design teams to turn subject expertise into structured learning. But the people who possess that knowledge are distributed throughout the organisation. They could be engineers, sales managers, compliance specialists, operations teams, or someone with 30 years of institutional knowledge who is about to retire.
The result can be a bottleneck. Subject-matter experts supply the knowledge, while specialist L&D teams must translate it into training. This process can take days or even weeks.
That model is now beginning to change. As demand for timely, relevant workplace learning grows, organisations are exploring ways to give employees the tools to create training materials directly.
Global learning technology company Articulate has launched Frontline, a new AI-powered platform. It enables employees and subject-matter experts outside traditional training roles to create high-quality learning content themselves. We are one of the three Articulate distributors in Africa. It is also the company’s only certified training partner on the continent and is introducing and supporting the platform across African markets.
Rather than starting from scratch, employees can give Frontline existing materials, including documents, presentations, conversations, and videos. They can then describe what employees need to learn. AI helps determine the learning objectives and recommends appropriate training assets.
Decentralising content creation
Using the same source material, Frontline can generate a coordinated training kit. This could include short courses, training decks, scenarios, quizzes, and other learning resources. Users can refine the material to meet specific requirements, including the time available for training, before distributing it to employees.
This approach illustrates how AI is decentralising corporate training by allowing people with relevant expertise to contribute directly to workplace learning. Instead of relying exclusively on specialist teams to develop every resource, organisations can distribute content creation across their workforces.
Crucially, decentralising content creation does not mean eliminating L&D departments. This isn’t about replacing L&D professionals with AI. It is about expanding their reach. If people closest to the knowledge can deal with more immediate and straightforward training requirements themselves, specialist L&D teams can concentrate their expertise on the more complex, strategic learning challenges where they add the greatest value.
The distinction is important. Employees can address routine training needs, while L&D professionals retain responsibility for more complex learning interventions. This creates opportunities to distribute workloads more effectively without removing specialist expertise from the process.
Preserving knowledge and measuring learning
The technology also addresses another growing organisational concern: knowledge retention. Experienced employees can play a more direct role in converting their expertise into reusable training materials before that knowledge leaves the organisation.
This is particularly relevant when experienced employees retire or move to other organisations. By turning their knowledge into structured learning resources, businesses can preserve valuable institutional knowledge and make it accessible to other employees.
Once organisations distribute the training, they can track participation, completion rates, quiz and knowledge-check results, and individual learner performance. These capabilities introduce measurable indicators to training that might previously have consisted of little more than a PowerPoint presentation, Word document, or email attachment.
For businesses, this shift offers greater visibility into how employees engage with learning materials. It also creates opportunities to identify knowledge gaps and assess learner progress, rather than relying solely on the distribution of training content.
The future of workplace learning in Africa
For African businesses, where skills development is already a major investment, the opportunity is significant. The next evolution of workplace learning isn’t simply putting more courses online. It’s making it possible for knowledge to become learning wherever that knowledge sits in the organisation, and doing it at the speed at which businesses now need to operate.
As organisations continue to invest in workforce development, AI is decentralising corporate training by bringing content creation closer to the people who understand the work. The approach could help businesses respond more quickly to changing skills requirements while preserving institutional knowledge and enabling L&D teams to focus on strategic priorities.
With the corporate e-learning market expanding globally and South African employers continuing to invest in skills development, the challenge is no longer simply making training available online. Organisations must also find practical ways to turn expertise into relevant, accessible and measurable learning at the pace modern workplaces demand.
