New America's Planetary Politics Initiative welcomes you to the 2025 Digital Futures Symposium conference on November 18 in Cape Town, South Africa, exploring the material foundations that make artificial intelligence possible—and what they mean for global power, sovereignty, and agency.
Held just days before the G20 Leaders' Summit in Johannesburg, the event is part of a multi-day forum brings together policymakers, scholars, technologists, and industry leaders to examine “Critical Circuits: Infrastructure Geopolitics in the Age of AI.”
Through panels, presentations, and breakout discussions, we'll ask:
- How can nations build strategic autonomy in critical AI infrastructure domains?
- What does digital autonomy and agency require—technically, economically, and politically?
- How can regional partnerships strengthen collective technological agency in the face of great-power competition?
Set in Cape Town, a hub for Africa's growing technology landscape, the conference is produced in partnership with the Global Center on AI Governance, the University of Cape Town's AI Initiative, and the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Lab at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Together, we're centering African perspectives on digital futures while connecting them to global governance conversations.
The November 18 conference will be held at the UCT GSB Academic Conference Centre, located at the Protea Hotel Cape Town Waterfront Breakwater Lodge (Portswood Road, V&A Waterfront).
Read Work from the Digital Futures Task Force and Our Partners:
- Who Controls AI?: Global Voices on Digital Sovereignty in an Unequal World, a collection by Candace Rondeaux, Swati Srivastava, Min Jiang, Arindrajit Basu, and Jeremy McKey
- On Sovereign AI, a conversation between Susan Ariel Aaronson and Pablo Chavez, moderated by Akash Kapur
- Bridging the AI Governance Divide, by Gordan LaForge, Robert Muggah, and Gabriella Seiler
- Toward an African Agenda for AI Safety
- Reframing Digital Peacebuilding in Africa: The Role of AI and Local Agency by Dr. Odilile Ayodele
