30 Nov 2025

DSFSI 2025 Retrospective (Day 7): The Road Ahead—2026 and Beyond

Day 7 of our retrospective: Looking forward to 2026, upcoming AfriDSAI fellowships, ongoing projects, and the future we're building together.

Day 7 of our 7-day retrospective celebrating DSFSI’s remarkable 2025 journey—and looking ahead to what’s next.

The Road Ahead: 2026 and Beyond

Over the past six days, we’ve celebrated:

  • Research excellence (Day 1): ACL papers, Mafoko, global recognition
  • Visionary leadership (Day 2): Inaugural lecture, AfriCHI keynote
  • Institutional growth (Day 3): AfriDSAI launch with Google.org support
  • Community building (Day 4): Indaba, global summits, collaborative ecosystems
  • Knowledge sharing (Day 5): Seminars, workshops, capacity building
  • Student success (Day 6): Graduations across PhD, Masters, Honours, and undergraduate levels

Now, we look forward.

🌅 What 2025 Taught Us

Before we look ahead, let’s reflect on what this year revealed:

1. African AI Research Has Come of Age

We’re not “catching up” to global AI—we’re leading conversations on ethical data governance (Esethu), community-centered licensing (NOODL), and adaptive NLP systems.

2. Institutions Enable Scale

Moving from DSFSI (research group) to AfriDSAI (institute) wasn’t about prestige—it was about creating infrastructure to sustain and scale impact across domains and borders.

3. Communities Are Our Competitive Advantage

From Masakhane to the Deep Learning Indaba to Substack subscribers—our strength is our networks. We don’t compete; we collaborate.

4. Transdisciplinarity Is Non-Negotiable

Medical AI, agricultural AI, climate AI—the biggest challenges require partnerships across disciplines, not just better algorithms.

5. The Next Generation Is Ready

Our students aren’t just learning—they’re leading. Publishing at top conferences, organizing workshops, building tools that matter.

🚀 What’s Coming in 2026

1. AfriDSAI Fellowship Programme Launch

The first official AfriDSAI Fellowship Programme call is coming soon!

This programme will enable:

  • Staff/Faculty Partnerships on transdisciplinary research projects
    • Collaborations across Computer Science, Medicine, Agriculture, Climate Science, Social Sciences
    • Seed funding for pilot projects
    • Access to compute infrastructure and datasets
  • Student Support
    • PhD fellowships focused on African AI challenges
    • Postdoctoral positions for emerging scholars
    • Visiting scholar programmes connecting African and global researchers
  • Industry and Civil Society Collaborations
    • Partnerships that ground research in real-world needs
    • Co-creation of tools and technologies
    • Pathways from research to implementation

When: Fellowship call opening early 2026 How to stay informed: Subscribe to the DS@UP Newsletter

2. Ongoing Projects Reaching Maturity

Several major initiatives will come to fruition in 2026:

ZA-African Next Voices Project

  • 3,000+ hours of speech data across 7 South African languages
  • High-quality, community-consented audio for ASR
  • Status: Released.

Digitisation Playbooks

  • Practical guides for building datasets in African languages
  • Community engagement protocols
  • Quality assurance frameworks
  • Licensing and governance templates
  • Status: Piloting with partner communities

Ethical Dataset Licensing Expansion

  • Scaling NOODL and Esethu frameworks beyond South Africa
  • Partnerships with legal scholars across the continent
  • Policy engagement on data sovereignty
  • Status: Legal framework refinement ongoing

3. Partnerships and Expansions

Continental Collaborations:

  • Strengthening ties with universities across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Egypt, and beyond
  • Joint research projects on shared challenges
  • Student and faculty exchange programmes

Industry Partnerships:

  • Co-developing tools for real-world deployment
  • Internship and career pathways for students
  • Research-to-practice pipelines

Policy Engagement:

  • Contributing to African Union AI strategy discussions
  • Advising South African government on AI policy
  • Participating in global AI governance conversations

🎯 Our 2026 Priorities

For DSFSI (Research Group):

  1. Language Technology Innovation
  2. Open Science Leadership
  3. Community Capacity Building

For AfriDSAI (Institute):

  1. Transdisciplinary Research
  2. Institutional Infrastructure
  3. Ecosystem Building

🔥 Immediate Next Steps

For Researchers:

For Students:

  • Apply for graduate programmes at UP Computer Science (focusing on African AI)
  • Engage with our research outputs
  • Attend our seminars and workshops (announced via newsletter)

For Partners (Universities, NGOs, Government, Industry):

  • Explore collaboration opportunities through AfriDSAI
  • Co-create research agendas addressing shared challenges
  • Support fellowship programmes and student scholarships

For Community Members:

💬 A Message of Gratitude

This retrospective isn’t just about DSFSI—it’s about everyone who believed in this vision:

  • Students who chose to work on cutting edge problems problems like African languages
  • Collaborators who shared data, code, and expertise freely
  • Funders who invested in long-term capacity, not quick wins
  • Community members who contributed to datasets and validated our work
  • Partners across universities, governments, and organizations
  • Families who supported late nights and long conferences

You made 2025 possible. You’ll make 2026 extraordinary.

🌟 The Invitation

African AI isn’t something to wait for—it’s something to build.

If you’re a:

  • Designer, researcher, linguist, or technologist → Join us
  • Student dreaming of impact → Apply to our programmes
  • Institution seeking partnerships → Reach out
  • Funder wanting to invest in African futures → Let’s talk
  • Community member with language expertise → Collaborate with us

Help us bridge the gap between AI and HCI, data and design, innovation and inclusion.

Together, we can build AI that listens before it speaks—and that reflects the voices, languages, and values of a diverse continent.

🎬 Until Next Time

This concludes our 7-day retrospective of DSFSI’s 2025 journey.

Thank you for following along. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for believing that African AI—built by Africans, for Africa, grounded in African values—is not just possible, but necessary.

See you in 2026. We have work to do.

Retrospective Series:

Stay connected:

From strong roots, new branches grow. From DSFSI to AfriDSAI. From 2025 to 2026 and beyond.

#DSFSI2025 #AfriDSAI #AfricanAI #TheFutureIsNow #2026Vision