The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zululand invites scholars, researchers, practitioners, and students to join in an important intellectual discussion about how African ways of knowing, global knowledge systems, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all connected. AI is changing how we create, share, and value knowledge. Its rapid growth raises important questions about fairness and who has the right to know things. AI has not been a neutral force in the progress of technology. Instead, it has often made global knowledge hierarchies worse by ignoring how indigenous and local people know things and pushing Western ways of knowing.

Neocolonial tendencies persist in new forms, as digital innovation and global funding mechanisms increasingly bolster and propagate hegemonic knowledge frameworks, often marginalising African intellectual traditions and viewpoints.