Hangzhou, China – 12 May 2026 – South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education and Training, Mr Buti Manamela, has urged global leaders to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) serves as a force for inclusion rather than deepening inequality, warning that the digital transformation of education is “not a neutral technical exercise, but a profoundly political project.”
Addressing delegates at the World Digital Education Conference in Hangzhou on Tuesday, Minister Manamela framed the global debate on AI around a powerful human question: whether the technology will advance dignity and opportunity for the majority of the world’s people, or entrench existing disparities.
He opened his address with the story of a young woman in a rural South African community learning centre, studying under difficult conditions marked by intermittent electricity, unreliable connectivity and shared devices. While aware of global conversations about artificial intelligence, she carries a quiet but urgent question, he said: “Is this for me? Or is this being done to me?”
“That,” Minister Manamela told delegates, “is the most important question before us today.”
The Minister cautioned that AI systems are being developed within existing global power structures and that, without deliberate governance rooted in justice and inclusion, they risk reproducing and intensifying inequality.
“We meet at a moment of genuine technological possibility,” he said. “But this technological transition, like all major technological transitions in history, is not neutral. It arrives embedded with existing power relations.”
Speaking from the perspective of a developmental state in the Global South, Minister Manamela stressed that South Africa views digital transformation as central to addressing the country’s legacy of colonial dispossession, racial exclusion and structural inequality.
“Digital transformation either advances that project or sets it back. There is no third option,” he said.
He pointed to persistent digital exclusion in South Africa, including unaffordable connectivity for students, under-resourced Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges, and language barriers in predominantly global-language digital education systems. These, he said, are not marginal challenges but daily realities for the majority.
South Africa’s investments in digital infrastructure, open learning systems, blended education models and AI-enabled student support are therefore aimed not only at modernisation, but at confronting structural inequality before it is reproduced “faster, at greater scale, and with less visibility” in digital form.
A central theme of the address was the need to reposition technical and vocational education within the global AI conversation.
The Minister observed that much of the international discourse focuses on elite universities and high-skill knowledge workers, while neglecting artisans, technicians, renewable energy specialists, robotics engineers and healthcare technologists who will underpin future economies.
“For Africa, where tens of millions of young people enter labour markets every year, many without access to university education, the question of how artificial intelligence connects to technical and vocational training is central to any serious development agenda,” he said.
He emphasised the importance of linking AI and digital transformation directly to industrialisation, infrastructure development and employment creation. South Africa, he noted, is prioritising industry-linked learning, work-integrated learning, micro-credentials and flexible education pathways that allow lifelong learning.
“The notion that education is something that happens once, in youth, before the real world begins, is over,” he said.
The Minister also welcomed growing cooperation between South Africa and China in vocational education and digital skills development, referencing China’s Luban Workshop model and its integration of digital skills into vocational curricula as offering valuable lessons for the African context.
Turning to global governance, Minister Manamela described the development of AI standards and regulatory frameworks as the defining challenge of the era.
He warned that current frameworks are largely shaped by a small number of technologically advanced countries and powerful corporations, with the Global South often relegated to observer status.
“This must change, and it must change urgently,” he said.
AI governance, he argued, cannot be legitimate or just without incorporating the developmental realities, ethical traditions and linguistic diversity of the majority world. A system designed without the participation of the Global South risks being “designed against us, not through malice, but through indifference.”
He called for transparency, accountability and safeguards against algorithmic discrimination, noting that biased systems can amplify inequality under the guise of mathematical objectivity.
Minister Manamela also cautioned against the unchecked commercialisation of educational AI.
“Knowledge is a public good. Education is a human right,” he said. “When AI systems in education are designed primarily to extract profit, the interests of learners and the public interest are subordinated to the interests of shareholders.”
South Africa, he affirmed, intends to play an active role in shaping international AI standards through UNESCO processes and multilateral forums, arguing that Africa must be a producer of norms rather than merely a consumer of technologies developed elsewhere.
Drawing parallels with previous technological revolutions, from the printing press to the internet, the Minister concluded that the impact of AI will ultimately be determined not by the technology itself, but by political choices about control, accountability and the distribution of benefits.
“The question before us is whether we possess the imagination and collective will to ensure that this extraordinary technology serves the many rather than the few,” he said.
Returning to the image of the rural student, he reminded delegates that decisions made in international forums will shape whether AI becomes part of her liberation or “simply another mechanism of her exclusion.”
“She has asked us a question,” he said. “Let us make sure that, when she asks it again in ten years’ time, we can answer it honestly.”
The World Digital Education Conference brings together education leaders, policymakers and technology experts from across the globe to explore the role of digital and intelligent innovation in shaping the future of learning.
