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While South Africa Plays Politics at the G20, the Rest of Africa Prepares for the Age of Intelligence
Mail & Guardian
|M&G 21 November 2025
This week Johannesburg hosts Africa's first-ever G20 Leaders' Summit. The theme is “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability”. Yet while diplomats wrangle over protocol and several countries—including the United States—have downgraded or boycotted attendance amid geopolitical tensions, one uncomfortable truth is being drowned out: South Africa is playing politics while the rest of the continent quietly prepares for the new age of intelligence.
More than a year after the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies published its draft National Al Policy Framework in October 2024, nothing has happened. Comments were incorporated, Minister Malatsi declared it ready for Cabinet, and then—silence. No gazetted policy, no implementation plan, no regulator, no clarity on frontier risks or embodied systems. In late 2025, as Tesla Optimus, Figure 02, and Boston Dynamics Atlas move from prototype to pilot deployment worldwide, South Africa’s official stance on Al governance remains a polite, high-level wish list from 2024.
Our neighbours did not wait.
This story is from the M&G 21 November 2025 edition of Mail & Guardian.
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