Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Manufacturing and Organisational Effectiveness in the Gambia: The Mediating Role of Human–AI Collaboration and Employee Engagement

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly transforming manufacturing by reshaping production processes, resource allocation, quality management, monitoring, and organisational decision-making. However, the organisational implications of AI adoption cannot be adequately explained from a technological perspective alone. Its effectiveness depends substantially on how employees interact with intelligent technologies and whether organisations create conditions that support adaptation, learning, participation, and engagement. This conceptual article develops an integrated framework explaining the relationship between AI-enabled manufacturing and organisational effectiveness in The Gambia, emphasising human–AI collaboration and employee engagement. Drawing on Kahn’s theory of personal engagement, the Job Demands–Resources model, social exchange theory, self-efficacy theory, and literature on trust in automation and human–AI teaming, the article proposes a sequential mechanism through which AI-enabled manufacturing influences organisational effectiveness through human–AI collaboration and employee engagement. Employee engagement is conceptualised in cognitive and physical/behavioural dimensions, recognising that AI may reduce routine physical effort while increasing cognitive demands associated with monitoring, interpretation, problem-solving, learning, and decision-making. The framework further identifies AI readiness, AI self-efficacy, trust in AI, and organisational support as contextual conditions that may strengthen or weaken these relationships. The Gambia provides a theoretically meaningful context because its emerging manufacturing sector, digital transformation agenda, skills constraints, and need for productive diversification create distinctive conditions for AI adoption. The article contributes an Africa-sensitive conceptual explanation of how technological transformation can generate human and organisational value and provides propositions to guide future empirical research.