AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it is a global tsunami hitting every industry from the United States to Chile, Uganda, and Romania. Yet, while executives rush to adopt AI just to keep up with the competition, the real battle is being fought on the old battlegrounds of digital transformation: people first, processes second, technology third.

This contrast between market rush and operational reality was the catalyst for a recent workshop I’ve attended, led by Carlos Parker, head of Arxia’s AI Acceleration Program, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Working with a local consultancy firm, the discussion proved that while AI models are evolving faster than ever, the real art lies in learning how to surf the wave rather than fighting it.

Carlos, who has delivered workshops across Europe, Latin America and Africa, says the conversation around AI has become universal. From Romania and Ukraine to Chile and Uganda, businesses everywhere are talking about artificial intelligence. Yet, according to him, the technological challenge itself is not the hardest part. 

“The real issue is not the technology itself,” he explains. “It’s about operationalizing it. How do companies integrate AI into their workflows? How do they measure return on investment? How do they help employees adapt?”

In his view, AI is not fundamentally changing the classic rules of digital transformation. The same principles still apply: people first, processes second, technology third.

AI Is an Accelerator, Not the Core

One of the strongest ideas emerging from my discussion with Carlos was that AI should not be treated as a goal in itself.

“The core has always been process optimization,” Carlos says.“You spend far more time defining workflows, defining policies, and managing organizational change than teaching people not just how to prompt, but also how to integrate and orchestrate AI tools effectively.”

This perspective contrasts sharply with the current market trend, where many organizations rush to “adopt AI” without clearly defining why they need it in the first place.

According to him, many executives are under pressure to demonstrate AI adoption simply because competitors are doing the same. Some companies already demand internal AI KPIs, even when employees are using AI for tasks that provide little practical value.

“The fact that you can use AI doesn’t mean you should,” he argues. “The important question is: does it actually improve efficiency or solve a real problem?”

Surfing the Wave Instead of Fighting It

Asked whether people should fear AI, Carlos used a simple metaphor.

“AI is like a wave,” he says. “You can try to fight it, or you can surf it.”

He believes the acceleration of AI development is unlikely to slow down. Governments, corporations and entire regions now see artificial intelligence as a strategic race tied to competitiveness, economic power and geopolitical influence.

“The United States, China and Europe all understand this is a priority,” he explains. “Once countries start investing resources at this scale, it becomes very difficult to stop.”

Competition itself becomes the engine. If one country or company believes another is advancing faster, everyone feels pressured to continue investing.

Beyond Automation: The Bigger Philosophical Question

The conversation also moved far beyond productivity and automation.

Carlos believes society is underestimating the deeper implications of AI — especially if artificial general intelligence (AGI) eventually becomes reality.

“If AI becomes better than humans across all economic domains, then we enter a completely different scenario,” he says. “And we don’t really have political or economic frameworks prepared for that.”

Unlike previous industrial revolutions, which created new categories of jobs alongside automation, AGI raises a more difficult question: what happens if machines can improve, maintain and optimize themselves?

Modern economic systems — whether capitalist or socialist — are fundamentally built around human labor. If work itself is no longer necessary, entire ideological structures may need to be reconsidered.

“How much meaning in our lives is connected to the work we do?” he asks. “What happens if that disappears?”

Eastern Europe’s Unexpected Advantage

One particularly interesting part of the discussion focused on Eastern Europe and its relationship with technology adoption.

While AI adoption among businesses remains cautious, Carlos sees the region as having a major long-term advantage due to its strong engineering and technical culture.

Countries such as Romania, Ukraine, Estonia and Moldova inherited a deep emphasis on science and engineering education — something he believes still shapes society today.

“In Eastern Europe, engineering and technology are culturally valued,” he says. “You see it in the number of programmers, in technical education, and even in the role of women in engineering compared to many Western countries.”

Romania, in particular, was mentioned as a country that historically adapted quickly to new technologies. From internet infrastructure to software development talent, the region may ultimately prove more flexible than some Western European economies traditionally perceived as more advanced.

At the same time, resistance to change remains universal.

“People adopt technology slowly everywhere,” he notes. “A lot of it is cultural. Change always involves risk.”

AI Adoption Is Ultimately About Trust

One of the workshop’s recurring themes was that companies are often less afraid of AI itself and more afraid of uncertainty.

Managers understand that change is coming, but many do not know where to begin.

That is why, Carlos argues, successful AI implementation should resemble a gradual organizational transformation rather than a simple software rollout.

“You don’t just buy licenses for everyone and expect magic to happen,” he explains. “Successful AI adoption requires a strategic, company-wide transformation process implemented gradually. You start with focused teams or use cases, validate what actually works in practice, measure results, build internal know-how, and then scale adoption step by step across the organization.”

In other words, the future of AI inside companies may depend less on the models themselves and more on leadership, organizational culture and change management.

The technology is already here. The harder question is whether people, businesses and institutions are ready to evolve with it.

And this is precisely the gap that Carlos aims to address through Arxia’s AI Acceleration Program — a framework designed to help companies move beyond experimentation and actually operationalize AI inside their organizations.

The post Riding the AI Wave: Why the Real Challenge Is Not Technology, but Change appeared first on Startups&TheCity.

News about Romanian IT companies operating on the African continent are rare, as companies are lacking knowledge of this complex market and its opportunities. So it came quite as a surprise to find out that last year, the Rwandan government started several projects of IT capacity building with Arxia, a company based in Cluj, Romania. In 2019, Arxia’s CEO, Daniel Homorodean also led an economic mission in Africa, together with several colleagues from Cluj IT Cluster, establishing connections and creating business opportunities with relevant partners in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. With the assistance of the Romanian embassy in Nairobi, the delegation was received by ministries, parliamentary commissions and other high level institutions. The Romanian delegation also met local IT companies and tech startups in the quest to create cooperation bridges between the Romanian and African IT industries. Daniel is also involved in defining standards, consulting and implementing systems to support e-government and e-administration processes in Romania.

We spoke with Daniel about the opportunities Africa offers to European IT companies, helping develop the African ecosystems.

IT capacity building in Rwanda

Our engagement with the Rwandan government started in 2018, when I’ve traveled to Kigali on behalf of the TYPO3 Association as part of the project meant for international expansion of TYPO3, a robust and secure open source CMS framework, yet not well known outside its core German-speaking (DACH) market.

The Rwandan national IT agency was quickly convinced of the benefits of TYPO3 and committed to use it to power all their national institutional portals, over 300 of them, from ministries and universities to embassies and city halls. Such an endeavor requires proper know-how and long term effort and this challenge offered us the chance to employ our vision in Africa: sustainable and efficient development happens when a country has acquired the know-how and has the ability to implement and maintain their projects, not being dependent on outside suppliers for solution and service providing. Therefore, our role should be one of enablers, facilitating know-how transfer and the development of their national internal capacity and foster the development of their own national technical community around TYPO3. This was our proposal.

This led starting our first project in Rwanda, aiming to support, mentor and coach a Rwandan team of developers from public institutions and from private software agencies to learn TYPO3 and to develop the institutional web portals. The second project soon followed, expanding our collaboration with a coaching project on software integration architecture, helping Rwanda to develop the software interoperability framework between the institutions of the country. For both projects, currently ongoing, I am glad to have found reliable partners with whom Arxia shares the delivery effort. On the software integration project, we make a team with another company from Cluj, Nordlogic. On the TYPO3 project, we team up with Macopedia from Poland. I believe in this partnership model and in its potential to expand, both in Rwanda and in other countries. I go by the TYPO3 motto, “inspiring people to share”, because there is a lot of opportunity in Africa and we can create much more value if we work together.

10s of millions of African SMEs will need digitalize their business

I have lately given quite a strong focus on developing relations in Africa. If you ask me, “Why Africa?”, there are two reasons for me. One is very personal and this relates to the passion that I have developed for the continent. I have been travelling in African countries for over 12 years. I love the energy, the colors, the rhythms, the openness and the directness of the people. I love Africa. I wanted for a long time to be more than just a tourist there.

Moreover, I see a tremendous business opportunity. By 2035 more than half of all the people who would be able to work in the world will actually be Africans. In the next few years, I am expecting tens of millions of African SMEs to digitalize their business, to start using the internet and software applications. This will generate a huge new market.

Africa is growing in population with more than 2.5% per year, meaning that by 2050 the Africans will double in number. They will reach 2.5 billions. This population is very young. It’s already getting quite well educated. It has a lot of energy and a lot of willingness to work and to progress. This will be the greatest global pool of workforce and talent.

It is clear for now that the African states themselves are not yet in the position of sustaining this tremendous demand of growth through proper digital systems, and that they need help, help that I believe that we can provide, in order to ensure and accelerate their progress. That is why I believe that the opportunity for us right now is great in Africa, and the moment is for us to go there.

IT can help tremendously in the sustainable development of African countries

I consider IT as a support industry for the growth and development of ecosystems. And as I’ve said at a recent presentation that I’ve held at the African Union in Addis Ababa in last November, all the countries, especially the African ones, need to have the ability to manage and control the data, the ability that right now eludes them because they do not have a proper informational infrastructure.

This means the ability to manage the spatial and territory information, the population data and the data about the movement of the people, the information about businesses and their dynamics, about financial transactions and taxation. Everything requires a proper infrastructure, technical infrastructure that allows the management of such information. This is why the digitalization and overall the IT support is essential for sustainability and development of those countries. And I would say that without the proper approach in this direction, the African countries run in the high risk that the tremendous opportunity of growth can transform into a danger.

It is very problematic when the young population willing to work is not able to find the context of opportunity in the country. Proper employment of IT support can help tremendously in this direction. This does not mean delivering off-the-shelf systems, but developing strategies, policies, acquiring capacity to implement and maintain complex applications, and developing tailored solutions that are adapted to their specific goals and needs. This is the approach that we promote and that we are ready to support with all our experience.

The aim is to develop a network of partnerships, which would enable tackling strategic projects

We already have started projects in several countries in Africa. I’ve mentioned the first two of them that we implement in Rwanda. We have advanced discussions with central institutions from Uganda and Ethiopia and good perspectives as well in Kenya.

This spring, from February to April, I will travel to Africa again, in at least four countries. On one hand to expand the relations already established in East Africa, on the other to explore new partnerships on the other side of the continent, in particular in Ghana and in Guinea.

My aim is to develop a network of partnerships, which would enable us to tackle strategic projects in various domains that range from public policy, standardization, implementation of systems, capacity building and training in various technical domains. It is clear that myself, my company, Arxia, or even overall the active group of companies that we’ve brought together in the Cluj IT Cluster requires a larger capacity in order to convert and to expand the high level of opportunity. Everything that I aim to do in Africa is based on a partnership approach.

The great opportunity in Africa also comes with a strong challenge. We face substantial competition, from more developed countries and strong multinationals, that aim to sell their solutions on the continent. They have an efficient political lobby and lots of money to invest. Many times their approach may not be clean nor guided by creating a lasting benefit for their target clients, however we are for now in disadvantage as we do not have the financial means, nor the political support, to compete with them.

Besides the principle-based approach that we promote we also need to foster the development of a support framework. That is why I have launched the initiative to develop a national strategy for the internationalization of the Romanian IT and to promote its implementation as national priority, since IT indeed is one of the most valuable assets on which we can build value as a country. There is much more to come and I would be happy to report back as we progress in creating more and more value in Africa and elsewhere.

To learn more about Daniel’s future plans and the opportunities he explores in Africa, connect with Daniel Homorodean on LinkedIn.

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