Kenya has the highest share of internet users paying for AI tools in the world. In the Digital 2027 report, which despite its name came out this October, 18.5% of Kenyans online aged 16 and above say they pay for an AI subscription each month. The worldwide figure is 9.5%, about half of Kenya’s.
That number comes from GWI, a research company that surveyed more than 235,000 people across 53 economies in the second quarter of 2026. Those 53 have 78% of the world’s internet users, and that’s what “the world” means here. DataReportal publishes the results with We Are Social and Meltwater.
Israel comes second at 14.1%, followed by the UAE at 13.3%. Nigeria is the next African country at 10.0%, while the US is at 6.8% and the UK at 4.9%. We can’t say whether Kenya’s share is growing, because this chart isn’t in last year’s report.
More Kenyans also say they pay for AI than for music streaming. Worldwide it’s the reverse, with more than twice as many people paying for music as for AI. Kenya is below the global figure on both music and TV and movie streaming, which means Kenyans in this survey aren’t big subscribers across the board. They do come first on digital news, far ahead of India’s 14.9%.
| Share of internet users aged 16+ who pay for | Kenya | Worldwide |
|---|---|---|
| AI tools | 18.5% | 9.5% |
| Digital news | 21.3% | 9.8% |
| TV and movie streaming | 23.5% | 32.4% |
| Music streaming | 12.5% | 22.7% |
The report doesn’t say which AI tools Kenyans pay for or how much they spend. It does say 58.6% of Kenyans online used ChatGPT and 36.8% used Google Gemini in the past month, and both got cheaper plans here last year. ChatGPT Go, which we covered when it reached Kenya last October, costs USD 5 a month. Google AI Plus, which arrived a month before that at KES 500 for the first six months, is now KES 900. Going up a level, ChatGPT Plus is USD 20 or about KES 2,600 and Google AI Pro is KES 3,700. So if you want a paid AI plan in Kenya, you can get one for under KES 1,000 a month.
The report doesn’t explain why Kenya comes first. The closest it gets is why Kenyans use AI: 59.3% to find information, 43.6% for advice on problems and 43.1% to learn or improve a skill, against 26.4% for entertainment. Those shares cover everyone using AI, including people who don’t pay. Our guess is that some people here pay for what they see as useful, which could explain why news and AI beat music, though TV and movie streaming still beats both.
Why 18.5% may not mean 4 million paying Kenyans
The 18.5% is a share of people who are online, and only 40.6% of Kenya’s 58.9 million people are. That’s 23.9 million internet users. Apply 18.5% to all of them and you get about 4.4 million Kenyans paying for AI. That’s our arithmetic, and it’s on the high side because the 23.9 million includes children under 16.
Microsoft’s numbers don’t fit with that. Its AI Diffusion report estimates how many people use generative AI, the kind behind ChatGPT. It starts from Microsoft’s own usage data, then adjusts for the devices people use, internet access and population. For the second quarter of 2026, it puts Kenya at 8.9% of people aged 15 to 64, against 18.8% worldwide. Kenya has about 36 million people in that age group, which comes to about 3.2 million users. So our sum from the survey gives more Kenyans paying for AI than Microsoft thinks are using it at all. Both are estimates, and neither counts subscribers.
Two things could be pushing the survey number up. The first is who answers. GWI fills set numbers of respondents by age, gender and education, but not by income, and it says that gives an accurate view of the online population. Our concern is that in a country where most people aren’t online, those who answer an online survey may be better off than the average internet user, and we’d expect them to be likelier to pay.
The second is free offers. Google gave Kenyan university and college students 12 months of AI Pro and bundles three months of AI Plus with new TECNO and Infinix phones. Someone on one of those might say they have a subscription, and the report doesn’t say how they were counted.
So among people an online survey can reach, Kenyans are the likeliest of any country surveyed to say they pay for AI, by a clear margin. How many people that adds up to is still open. OpenAI and Google could help settle it with Kenyan subscriber numbers, and we haven’t seen either publish them.
Join the discussion