The first Times Higher Education (THE) World Academic Summit to be held on African soil opened in Cape Town on Tuesday, bringing university leaders, policymakers, researchers and representatives from business and civil society together to examine how higher education is changing in the age of artificial intelligence.
The three-day summit, hosted by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in partnership with the University of Bristol and Times Higher Education, is being held under the theme “Knowledge, justice and futures: Universities in the age of intelligence”. Organisers say more than 500 delegates and 100 speakers are participating, representing higher education, government, research, business and civil society.
The choice of Cape Town gives the summit a significant African dimension. UCT has described the gathering as an opportunity to bring African intellectual traditions and institutional experiences into international discussions about the future of universities, rather than treating technological change as a question shaped solely by institutions in Europe and North America. The programme includes discussions on regional innovation, digital inequalities, AI governance and the role of universities in society.
UCT Vice-Chancellor Professor Mosa Moshabela said the university had changed its approach to the use of AI in student assessment. Rather than relying on AI-detection systems to penalise students, UCT has developed an institutional framework intended to support students in using AI responsibly and developing appropriate skills. His comments reflect a wider debate across universities over whether generative AI should primarily be treated as an academic-integrity risk or incorporated into teaching and assessment practices.
The discussion also highlights the different institutional and cultural contexts in which universities are responding to AI. University of Bristol President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Evelyn Welch has argued that concerns about artificial intelligence vary between societies, while institutions nevertheless face questions about common principles and standards. The summit’s programme consequently places technological change alongside questions of justice, access, institutional purpose and public value.
For African universities, these questions extend beyond classroom use. Access to computing infrastructure, connectivity, research funding and locally relevant datasets remains uneven across the continent, making the adoption of AI partly an issue of educational capacity and digital sovereignty. UCT’s AI initiative, for example, identifies African-focused research and applications in areas including health, climate, poverty and inequality as part of its agenda.
The summit runs until Thursday. On Wednesday, THE is scheduled to publish its World University Rankings 2027, covering institutions across 118 countries and territories, compared with 115 in the previous edition.
