Nairobi, Sept. 2 -- Its 8 a.m. on a Monday. You have barely settled at your desk when requests start pouring in. The CEO wants revised projections after a customer delays an order, the bank needs an updated cashflow forecast, and the board pack is due before lunch.

Not long ago, that meant hours rebuilding Excel models and rewriting reports. Today, an AI assistant can produce a solid first draft in minutes.

The bigger question is not productivity. It is this: if AI can perform much of the technical work, where does the real value of a finance professional lie?

The answer is higher up the value chain. For years, finance careers began with collecting data, reconciling accounts, updating spreadsheets and producing routine reports before p...