A quarter of South Africa's Claude conversations are coursework, more than worldwide but less than in most African countries in the index
In the latest period of the Anthropic Economic Index, dated 1 May 2026, 26% of South African conversations with the AI assistant Claude were classified as coursework, against 16% of conversations worldwide. Country by country, that ranks South Africa 41st of 121. Of the 26 African countries in the index, 21 have a higher coursework share.
Anthropic, the company that makes Claude, publishes the index from a sample of anonymised conversations on Claude's chat app and its Cowork tool. It classifies each conversation by whether it looks like work, personal life or coursework, gives it a broad topic, and matches it to tasks from O*NET, a US government list of the tasks done in each occupation. The figures describe conversations with one AI product. They are not a measure of how many people use AI, or of jobs. The release spans periods from 1 April to 1 May 2026, but figures by country and province are published only for the latest period.
Anthropic is measuring the use of its own product here, and we have no independent source to check the figures against. MzansiData uses AI tools, Claude among them, to help find and process data and draft posts, including this one; the figures were retrieved with Anthropic's own data tool. A person checks and approves every post (About).
South Africa's Claude usage index is below the global average and sixth among African countries
The index's headline measure is the Anthropic Usage Index: a country's share of all Claude conversations divided by its share of the working-age population of the countries covered. A value of 1,0 means usage in line with population, and 1,5 would mean 50% more than population alone predicts. South Africa's index is 0,46, which places it 86th of the 121 countries with a published index. The chart shows all 26 African countries in the index.
Source: Anthropic, Anthropic Economic Index, period dated 1 May 2026, licensed CC BY 4.0 (released 24 June 2026, the date of the dataset's latest update).
Mauritius (1,74), Tunisia (1,40), Morocco (0,90), Algeria (0,56) and Botswana (0,52) are above South Africa, and Namibia (0,44) is just below. The index adjusts for working-age population only, not for internet access, income, language or the use of other AI tools.
South Africa's coursework share is above the worldwide figure and below most African countries in the index
The worldwide figure of 16% is a share of all conversations, so the countries with the most conversations weigh most in it. Compared country by country, South Africa's 26% is 41st of 121. Within Africa it is on the low side. Tunisia's 52% is the highest of all 121 countries, and Algeria (47%), Mozambique (43%), Cameroon (41%), Zimbabwe (40%) and Botswana (37%) are among the 21 African countries above South Africa. Four are lower: Mauritius, Kenya, Nigeria and, by a fraction of a point, Madagascar.
Gauteng and the Western Cape account for 84% of the country's conversations
Anthropic publishes figures for four of the nine provinces; the other five are not released, which doesn't mean they are zero. The provinces have no usage index of their own, so the map shows each province's share of South Africa's conversations. That is a measure of volume, and provinces with more people would be expected to have more conversations.
Source: Anthropic, Anthropic Economic Index, period dated 1 May 2026, licensed CC BY 4.0 (released 24 June 2026, the date of the dataset's latest update).
Province outlines are merged from the Electoral Commission's 2026 municipal boundaries. Population shares in the text: Stats SA, Census 2022, Statistical Release P0301.4 (released 10 October 2023).
Gauteng has 52,4% of South Africa's conversations and the Western Cape 31,5%, which together make 84%. The two provinces are home to about 36% of South Africans, according to Census 2022. (The census counts everyone; the index uses the working-age population.) KwaZulu-Natal, with about a fifth of the population, has 8,9% of conversations, and the Eastern Cape, with about 12%, has 2,0%. The four published provinces cover 95% of the national total. The remaining 5% may include the unpublished provinces and conversations with no province assigned. These shares can't separate population from internet access, income, where employers and universities are, or how Anthropic assigns a conversation to a province.
| Province | Share of SA conversations | Work | Personal | Coursework |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gauteng | 52,4% | 45% | 31% | 25% |
| Western Cape | 31,5% | 47% | 29% | 24% |
| KwaZulu-Natal | 8,9% | 40% | 33% | 28% |
| Eastern Cape | 2,0% | 27% | 26% | 46% |
| South Africa as a whole | 44% | 30% | 26% |
Source: Anthropic, Anthropic Economic Index, period dated 1 May 2026, licensed CC BY 4.0 (released 24 June 2026, the date of the dataset's latest update). Work, personal and coursework are shares of each province's classified conversations, rounded, so rows may not add to 100%.
The Eastern Cape has the highest coursework share of the published provinces
Coursework is 46% of the Eastern Cape's conversations, against 26% nationally, and education and learning is its largest topic, at 38%. In the other three published provinces the largest topic is content creation and copywriting, and coursework is between 24% and 28%. The Eastern Cape figure rests on 2% of the national total. Anthropic's published tables give no sample sizes, and on a base this small one institution or a few heavy users could account for much of the share.
Education and learning is a larger topic in South Africa than worldwide
The next chart compares the eight largest request topics in South African conversations with their shares worldwide. Most pairs sit close together; education and learning has the widest gap.
Source: Anthropic, Anthropic Economic Index, period dated 1 May 2026, licensed CC BY 4.0 (released 24 June 2026, the date of the dataset's latest update).
Content creation and copywriting is the largest topic both in South Africa (24%) and worldwide (23%). Software development is 11% here and 12% worldwide. Education and learning takes 21% of South African conversations, eight percentage points more than the worldwide 13%. Research and intelligence is smaller here, at 8% against 11%, and hobbies and lifestyle is 6% against 9%.
Anthropic groups O*NET occupations into 22 job categories. Of South African conversations matched to job tasks, 15% fall in the category Anthropic calls "Educational Instruction and Library", two percentage points above the worldwide 13%. The largest category, "Computer and Mathematical", is 24% in both. Of South Africa's eight most common tasks, three stand out against their worldwide shares: applying mathematics to practical problems (1,5% of task-matched conversations here, 0,8% worldwide), answering students' questions (1,8% and 1,2%) and developing teaching or training materials (1,7% and 1,0%). The most common task, searching reference material to answer questions, is less common here than worldwide. These figures describe what the conversations are about. The data can't say whether the people having them are teachers, and it says nothing about who does these jobs or how many there are.
The figures cover one product and one period
A country where people mostly use other AI assistants will look low on this index even if AI use there is common. The index counts conversations, so a few heavy users can raise a province's share, and the classification into topics, tasks and coursework is automated. With one period, the figures can't show whether use is growing, and the period falls at a different point in South Africa's academic year from many other countries', which may affect coursework shares.
Anthropic updates the index from time to time, and the next update has no published date. The data and the method notes are at anthropic.com/economic-index.