GenAI Think Tank 2026

Prof Caroline B. Ncube is a Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where she holds the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DST&I) – National Research Foundation Research (NRF) SARChI Chair in Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development. 

Prof Ncube holds a NRF B2 rating and is a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). Since 2023, she is the recipient of a UCT Excellence Award for Professors. In 2024, she received the South African Women in Science Awards (SAWISA) Distinguished Woman Researcher (Humanities and Social Sciences) award. 

She lectured on the WIPO-ARIPO-Africa University Masters Degree in IP (2012 – 2022) and is an Associate Member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, University of Ottawa. She is a member of the African Continental Free Trade Area Trade and Industrial Development Advisory Council and several other continental advisory boards. She is a co-leader of the Open African Innovation Research (OpenAIR) partnership and participates in several other research projects.  

Prof Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a historian and decolonial/postcolonial theorist. He is currently Professor of History and Canada Research Chair (CRC) Tier 1 in Pluralistic Societies: Epistemic Pluralism and Ecologies of Knowledges at the University of Calgary, Canada. In addition, Prof Ndlovu-Gatsheni holds several professorships including Professor Extraordinarius in the Department of Leadership and Transformation (DLT) at UNISA; Professor Extraordinarius at the Centre for Gender and African Studies at UFS; Honorary Professor in the School of Education (Education & Development Studies) at UKZN; Visiting Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) at UJ; and is also a Research Associate of The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at The Open University in the United Kingdom. Prof Ndlovu-Gatsheni is founding Head of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI) and the founder of the Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN), both at UNISA, and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). 

His field of work includes decolonial/postcolonial theory, empire & colonialism, politics of knowledge & decolonisation of higher education, and he has fieldwork and archival experience in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Professor Ndlovu-Gatsheni has over a hundred publications to his name, which bear testimony to his global scholarly influence. 

Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh is a senior research officer at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he coordinates the EthicsLab’s research development program. 

His work sits at the intersection of African political thought, ethics and emerging technologies, and his scholarship contributes to debates on decolonisation as an ethical, intellectual and political project. His research has explored how questions of knowledge, identity and belonging are articulated and contested within African political and intellectual traditions, and how these dynamics shape ethical and political claims about justice both past and present. He is particularly interested in how African thought is leveraged in contemporary debates on AI ethics. 

Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem is a philosopher of science and technology, an AI ethics policy advisor, and a machine ethics researcher. Currently at UP, she is the UNESCO Chair in AI for Community Resilience, Head of the Department of Philosophy, and a senior faculty fellow of the African Institute for Data Science and AI. Emma also leads the AI ethics group at the South African Centre for AI Research (CAIR). She is the current Chairperson of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), a member of UNESCO’s AI Ethics Experts without Borders Network, and joined the WEF’s Global Future Council on Autonomous Systems in 2025. She has been a member of the Global Academic Network, Centre for AI and Digital Policy, Washington DC since 2023, and has worked on AI governance projects with the African Union Development Agency and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. She is a scientific advisor for the African Centre for AI, and a member of the international advisory board at the Global Centre on AI Governance.  

Scott Timcke is a political theorist whose research examines the relationship between capitalism, technology, democracy, and state power to analyse the historical development and contemporary contradictions in the North and South Atlantic. He holds a PhD from Simon Fraser University and has held appointments at The University of the West Indies, Research ICT Africa and the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). 

He is the author of several books, including Algorithms and the End of Politics, and is currently completing a manuscript on capitalist AI and its implications for democratic and authoritarian forms of government. 

His research focuses on class formation, state formation, the rule of law, and the dynamics of advanced capitalism, with particular attention to how technical change reshapes institutions, social relations, and political possibilities. Through a critical, historical lens, his scholarship seeks to clarify the conditions under which democratic life can flourish. 

Jantina de Vries is founding and current director of the Ethics Lab and Professor of Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She works in the field of ethics, and is especially interested in the ethics of new and emerging health technologies in AI, genomics and neuroscience. She is also very interested to understand better how ideas and experiences from the African continent can and should inform our ethics. This is the work that the EthicsLab tries to foster.

Jantina was a member of the WHO Genome Editing Expert Advisory Committee, a member of the H3Africa Steering Committee and the founding Chair of the H3Africa Working Group on Ethics. She led the development of many ethics guidelines for genomics research that are used across the African continent. She is a member of the Ethics Board of Médecins Sans Frontières and the Steering Committee of the Global Forum for Bioethics in Research. She currently is helping establish the UCT AI Initiative.

Jantina obtained her DPhil through The Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford (2011), and an undergraduate degree in sociology at Wageningen University (2003). She has published over 150 articles in international peer reviewed journals.

Prof Shireen Motala is the DHET/NRF South African Research Chair: Teaching and Learning (PSET) in the Faculty of Education at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) where she also served as Head of the Postgraduate School. She is a member of the Academy of Science in South Africa (ASSAf).

Prof Motala has held numerous leadership roles related to higher education including Chairperson of the Education Policy Consortium (2006-2010), Chairperson of the UNESCO South African Commission (2001-2006) and first inaugural president of the South African Research Association (SAERA) (2013-2014). She was appointed by the Minster of Higher Education and Training to serve on the Council of Higher Education (CHE) for two terms from 2010-2018. In 2013, she served on the Ministerial Committee to review the national Senior Certificate examination. She is currently a trustee at the South African Institute for Distance Education. She is on the Assessment and Accreditation committee of UMALUSI-the Council for quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training.

An NRF rated researcher, Prof. Motala has initiated collaborations between universities across Africa and with Asian and European institutions which have led to the formation of long-term regional and international partnerships. As a leader in research, she was the principal investigator for the international Consortium for Research on Equity, Access and Transitions in Education (CREATE).

Sioux McKenna is Professor of Higher Education Research at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her interests include what knowledge is legitimised by the academy and what is not, and who gets to access this knowledge and who does not. She currently undertakes research on the university rankings industry, the academic publishing industry, and the implications of artificial intelligence for higher education's role as a public good. 

Prof McKenna manages several EU-funded international projects, focused on democracy, doctoral education and the nature of knowledge. She also leads two national projects, including the DHET UCDG-funded Enhancing Postgraduate Education project, of which this Think Tank is part. She is also the lead of an ASSAf Consensus Study on the implications of GenAI for Knowledge.