Babalola Oladeji, a product manager with expertise in digital operations, product merchandising and strategic project management, has revealed that the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in modern product management is as a power tool, and not a replacement for the product manager.
In places like Nigeria and across Africa, Babalola stated that product teams are often working with limited data, messy systems, fast-changing user behavior, as well as real constraints like infrastructure, trust, and affordability but AI helps to cut through that chaos.
For instance, according to him, instead of reading 10,000 WhatsApp complaints or support tickets manually, AI can surface patterns quickly. “It can show us how people actually think, not how we assume they think. A real pattern I have seen both in Africa and globally — is that people don’t search the way products are structured. They search by symptoms, problems, or situations, not categories,” he noted.
He continued; “So AI’s role in product management is really turning messy, real-world behaviour into usable signals and helping Product Managers make better decisions faster. Globally, the same thing is happening, just at a bigger scale. In the US or Europe, AI helps teams personalize and optimize. In Africa, it helps us design smarter with fewer resources. The Product manager still owns judgment. AI just helps us see clearly.”
So why does the title “AI Product Manager” spark so much debate? The expert, who is a professional certified Artificial Intelligence in Product Manager, said the narrative is that one person hears: “Oh, a PM who uses AI tools.” Another hears: “Oh, someone building AI-driven products.”
In markets like Nigeria, this confusion is even louder because AI still feels new, almost like a threat.
Some people think: “Does this mean traditional PMs are outdated?” “Do I now need to code models to stay relevant?” What’s happening is not replacement but an evolution.
For Babalola, most “AI PM” roles today are either: a rebrand (same PM, better tools), or a specialization (PMs working on AI-heavy products). Problem-solving will always need humans AI doesn’t remove PMs it raises the bar.
What separates an AI-powered PM from someone building AI products? Babalola disclosed that an AI-powered PM: Can build any product fintech, health, e-commerce, and logistics, uses AI to work smarter: research, docs, analysis, and experiments. While a PM building AI products: Is responsible for a product where AI must work correctly or people get hurt, misled, or lose trust. Think healthcare, credit scoring, fraud detection, recommendations.
In Africa, this distinction matters a lot. For example: If an AI healthcare product gives advice without explanation, users may simply not trust it or worse, misuse it.
In my healthcare research, I saw this clearly: People hesitated because they didn’t understand why the system was recommending something.
That’s not a “ChatGPT problem. “That’s AI product management trust, explainability, and responsibility.
So how can one realistically harness AI today? Babalola emphasized that AI should be the second brain, not a decision-maker. For discovery; Use AI to cluster feedback from calls, chats, surveys. Especially powerful in markets like Nigeria where feedback is noisy and informal.
For strategy; he uses AI to pressure-test ideas: pricing, positioning, personas. But he never ship without validating with real users.
For experimentation; faster hypotheses, faster copy variants, faster onboarding and education content.
For execution; this is where AI saves insane time. The key is this: clear problem, measurable outcome and trust built into the experience. That is how AI actually improves products, not just productivity.
