Governing with Uncertain Evidence: AI, Public Institutions, and the Contested Landscape of Decision-Making in South Africa
Painel | Hybrid
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Organized by:
Tayarisha Centre for Digital Governance
- In partnership with: CLEAR AA
About the Event
Participants will leave the session with a grounded account of how AI is changing evidence generation and use at two levels of the South African government, including what is working and what is not. They will gain an understanding of the governance gaps that open up when AI tools enter M&E systems faster than accountability frameworks can adapt. They will hear directly from a major technology company about how it understands its obligations to the public institutions adopting its infrastructure. Furthermore, they will have a clearer sense of the questions evaluators, programme managers, and oversight bodies should ask of any AI tool entering their evidence workflows. The session develops the concept of evaluative accountability for AI infrastructure, the idea that evaluation's role is not only to use AI tools responsibly but to subject those tools to the same standards of scrutiny applied to any other intervention.
Speakers
| Nome | Título | Biography |
|---|---|---|
| Rekgotsofetse Chikane | Dr | Dr Rekgotsofetse Chikane is a Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of Governance and the Director of the Tayarisha Centre for Digital Governance. He is also a political commentator, activist and the author of Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation: The Politics behind the #MustFall Movements. He has most recently worked as a Research Associate at the Wits Institute for Socio-Economic Research and as Deputy Chairperson of the civil society movement, Defend our Democracy, amongst other civil society organisations and boards. His research focuses on Decolonial Thought, Digital Public Infrastructure, Development, Youth Politics, Complexity Economics, and South African Public Policy. |
Moderators
| Nome | Título | Biography |
|---|---|---|
| Rekgotsofetse Chikane | Dr | Dr Rekgotsofetse Chikane is a Senior Lecturer at the Wits School of Governance and the Director of the Tayarisha Centre for Digital Governance. He is also a political commentator, activist and the author of Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation: The Politics behind the #MustFall Movements. He has most recently worked as a Research Associate at the Wits Institute for Socio-Economic Research and as Deputy Chairperson of the civil society movement, Defend our Democracy, amongst other civil society organisations and boards. His research focuses on Decolonial Thought, Digital Public Infrastructure, Development, Youth Politics, Complexity Economics, and South African Public Policy. |