Research Agenda
Ai, Cybersecurity & Digital Rights
What governance conditions allow Ai and digital systems to expand public value, institutional capacity and rights, in South Africa and across the continent. We bring law, policy and technical understanding to bear on that question, tested continually against lived conditions and the evolving realities of Ai, cyber resilience and digital rights protection.
Foundational Research
Our foundational work examines how Ai systems are designed, trained, evaluated and governed, and how cybersecurity risk is identified, managed and accounted for within those systems and the institutions that rely on them, so that legal, policy and institutional responses are grounded in an accurate understanding of technical capability, limitation and risk.
Research priorities include:
- Machine learning operational logic, Ai reasoning & rationality
- Ai safety and alignment
- Context, causation and emergent properties in machine learning
- Bias, algorithmic proxy discrimination and bias mitigation
- Transparency, explainability and the black box problem
- Human oversight and meaningful human control
- Ai-human integration & automation bias
- Cybersecurity governance, risk ownership and incident accountability
- Legal and Institutional responses to Ai policy & governance
- Intersection of Ai, Cybersecurity & digital rights
Corporate Ai Governance & Enterprise Risk
Board and executive oversight of Ai adoption, internal accountability structures and compliance obligations for Ai systems deployed by private-sector enterprises.
Data Governance & Sovereignty
Data control, provenance and lineage, cross-border data flows, infrastructure, quality assurance, interoperability standards and regulatory conditions.
Public Administration & Ai Governance
Research on procurement, deployment, risk management, audit, assurance and accountability mechanisms for Ai systems used across government departments, state entities and public administration functions.
Cybersecurity Governance & Institutional Accountability
How cyber risk is governed in line with global best practice to build institutional resilience, including incident response and disclosure obligations, and the institutional structures.
Rights, Equality & Institutions
This research line examines how Ai and data-intensive systems shape rights, equality, access and institutional legitimacy. It focuses on the people and communities most exposed to automated decisions, surveillance, exclusion and unequal distribution of technological benefits.
Human Rights & Social Impacts
- Digital divide across gender, geography, language, class, race and ability
- Ai surveillance, biometric systems and data protection
- Border management, social welfare, justice and public administration
- Accountability, remedies and meaningful routes of redress
- Ai literacy, public understanding and institutional capacity building
Gender, Children, Youth, Labour & Ai Futures
Women’s exposure to automation and algorithmification; click-work and platform labour; the informal economy; children and young people; and the future of skills, work and public participation.
Algorithmic Discrimination
Bias and proxy discrimination in machine learning systems, equality-sensitive decision-making and the safeguards required where automated systems affect rights, opportunity or access to essential services.
Digital Rights & Democratic Resilience
Information integrity, online expression, civic space, platform governance and the rights implications of increasingly automated digital environments.
Critical Systems & Emerging Risks
Our sector work focuses on domains where Ai and digital systems carry the highest stakes for people, public institutions and social resilience. We also examine emerging systems and threats that are likely to reshape governance priorities in South Africa and across the continent.
Priority Sectors
Healthcare
Clinical Ai integration, patient safety, data governance and accountability for medical decision-support systems.
Education
Pedagogical impacts, workforce skills, access, academic integrity and local educational continuity.
Climate, Agriculture & Environment
Sustainable farming, climate adaptation, biodiversity protection and the governance of data-driven land and food systems.
Justice & Public Administration
Process and decision automation in the courts and the state, including accountability for public-sector Ai systems.
Digital Identity & Biometrics
Identity systems, biometric data, access to services and the rights of identified people.
Surveillance & Law Enforcement
Accountability for surveillance technologies, predictive systems and algorithmic policing.
Financial Services & Enterprise Risk
Ai-driven credit, fraud detection and risk management systems, and the governance conditions required for accountable Ai adoption in banking, insurance and financial services.
Ai & Township Economy
Ai adoption in township use cases, access and exclusion within township and informal economies, including small business digitalisation, platform-mediated trade and the governance conditions required for Ai to support local economic participation.
Emerging High-Risk Areas
Ai Safety, Security & Alignment
Research engagement with the safety, security, reliability and alignment questions raised by increasingly capable Ai systems.
Critical Infrastructure & National Cyber-Resilience
Governance of cyber risk to critical infrastructure and essential services, and the institutional and regulatory conditions, including South Africa's Cybercrimes Act, required for national cyber-resilience.
Ai-Enabled Cyber Risk
The changing offence-defence balance as Ai is used in social engineering, fraud, deepfakes and information integrity attacks, and what this demands of technical and legal response.
Generative Ai & Language Technologies
Local language models, bias mitigation, cultural representation and the role of Ai in South Africa’s multilingual environment.
Military Ai & Continental Security
Autonomous weapons governance, military Ai integration, meaningful human control and Ai targeting decision-making under international humanitarian law.
Ai Investment & Funding Conditions
How public and private investment, funding structures and capital access shape the direction of Ai development, and the governance conditions required for funding models that serve local priorities.
Cross-Cutting Themes
These themes apply across the agenda. They keep the work grounded in local priorities, attentive to power and inequality, and connected to the institutional conditions required for responsible technological development.
Tech Governance
Resources
Explore legislation, policy and reports on the governance of Ai, cyber resilience, data, and digital rights. Scoped for South Africa and Africa context.
Responsible Technology
Governance Compass
A practical reference point for the legal and governance instruments governing artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data protection and digital rights in South Africa.
