Resources & Useful Links

iAfrica.com
One of South Africa's longest-running digital platforms, now focused on AI news and innovation across the continent. Covers startups, policy, health, agriculture and more.
Best for: general readers and industry professionals

Alliance for AI
A Johannesburg-based organisation working to empower Black and historically marginalised communities through AI. Runs education programmes, an AI startup clinic, advocacy work and a newsletter tracking the African AI ecosystem.
Best for: students, practitioners and anyone interested in inclusive AI development in Africa

Deep Learning Indaba
The annual gathering of Africa's AI and machine learning community. Brings together researchers, students and practitioners from across the continent. The 2026 gathering takes place in Lagos, Nigeria. Sign up to their newsletter to stay updated on events, programmes and opportunities.
Best for: researchers and students based in Africa

Masakhane
A grassroots, continent-wide research community focused on natural language processing for African languages. Masakhane roughly translates to "we build together" in isiZulu.
Best for: researchers, linguists and anyone interested in African language technology

AI for the Global South (AI4GS)
A collection of perspectives, research and policy-relevant insights on AI in Global South contexts, including Africa.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

AI in Africa: A Landscape Study
An overview of the current state of AI in Africa, covering economy and infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, open-source, skills development and financing.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

A Study on the AI Landscape of Universities in Africa
An overview of how African universities are engaging with AI across research, teaching and institutional strategy.
Best for: academic researchers and higher education professionals

Playbook on Digitisation of Oral Data for NLP of Low-Resource Languages
A practical guide to ethical data collection for under-resourced African languages, treating low-resourcedness as a social and historical issue rather than a purely technical one.
Best for: researchers and linguists working on African language technology

Afrokwary
A platform amplifying the voices of researchers, academics and innovators contributing to AI in Africa, through interviews and knowledge-sharing sessions.
Best for: researchers and anyone interested in the African AI ecosystem

Africa AI News
A Substack newsletter by Carrington Malin providing news, comment and insight on how AI, innovation and new policymaking are transforming Africa. Over 1,000 subscribers.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

Africa's Business Heroes (ABH) AI newsletter
A newsletter spotlighting African entrepreneurs using AI to address challenges across health, agriculture, finance and beyond. Backed by the Jack Ma Foundation. Also published on LinkedIn.
Best for: general readers and industry professionals

AINews by smol.ai
A daily digest that pulls from AI communities across Discord, Reddit and X/Twitter. Dense and technical, but one of the most comprehensive free sources available.
Best for: researchers and practitioners

The Batch by DeepLearning.AI
A weekly newsletter from AI educator Andrew Ng covering research, industry news and practical applications. Accessible without being shallow.
Best for: all audiences

Import AI by Jack Clark
A weekly deep-dive into cutting-edge AI research and policy, written by Jack Clark. Predates and is independent of Anthropic, which Clark co-founded. Strong on safety, geopolitics and the implications of new research.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

Exponential View by Azeem Azhar
Weekly analysis on how AI and other technologies are reshaping society, business and governance. Less technical, more contextual.
Best for: general readers and industry professionals

There's An AI For That newsletter
A three-times-weekly roundup of the latest AI tools, products and developments. Practical and broad in scope, with over 2.8 million subscribers. See also their tools directory below.
Best for: general readers and industry professionals

ChinAI by Jeffrey Ding
Weekly translations and analysis of Chinese AI research, policy and industry developments. Invaluable for understanding the global AI landscape beyond the anglophone bubble.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

Ongea AI
A Kenyan podcast exploring the adoption and use of AI in Africa, with a particular focus on how African creatives, professionals and communities are engaging with the technology. Produced by Creatives Garage.
Best for: general readers and anyone interested in AI through an African lens

The AI Daily Brief
A concise daily news show covering the most significant developments in AI. Good for staying informed without spending hours reading.
Best for: all audiences

Hard Fork by the New York Times
A weekly conversation between journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton on technology and its social implications. Thoughtful and accessible.
Best for: general audiences and policy professionals

Latent Space
A technical podcast focused on AI engineering, covering large language models, agents, infrastructure and tooling. Run by swyx, who also produces AINews.
Best for: practitioners and researchers

Mapping the potential and limitations of generative AI in LMICs
Drawing on the experiences of over 50 innovators and researchers in low- and middle-income countries, this paper examines how generative AI is being applied in agriculture, health and education across Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

Why Universities Are Struggling to Keep AI Talent
A University of Chicago working paper examining how AI researchers are leaving academia for industry, and what this means for higher education and public research.
Best for: academic researchers and higher education professionals

arXiv (AI and machine learning)
The primary preprint server where most AI research is published before formal peer review. The cs.AI and cs.LG sections cover artificial intelligence and machine learning respectively.
Best for: researchers

Papers With Code
Pairs published AI research papers with their open-source code and benchmark results. Useful for researchers who want to reproduce or build on published work.
Best for: researchers and practitioners

Nature Machine Intelligence
A peer-reviewed journal publishing significant advances in AI and machine learning research.
Best for: academic researchers

Semantic Scholar
An AI-powered academic search engine from the Allen Institute. Stronger than Google Scholar for discovering related work and tracking citation networks.
Best for: researchers

Connected Papers
A visual tool for exploring the citation graph around a paper. Particularly useful for literature reviews and finding foundational work in a new area.
Best for: researchers and students

Google Scholar Alerts
Set up email alerts for keywords or authors to be notified when new papers are published. Simple but highly effective for staying current.
Best for: researchers

South Africa National AI Policy Framework
The official South African government framework setting out national priorities and principles for the development and governance of AI.
Best for: policy professionals and researchers based in South Africa

Global Center on AI Governance
Publishes the African Observatory on Responsible AI and policy briefs relevant to African contexts. UCT co-leads the African Hub.
Best for: policy professionals and researchers in Africa

AI Now Institute
An independent research centre that examines the social implications of AI, with a focus on power, accountability and rights. Publishes accessible annual reports and policy briefs.
Best for: policy professionals and general readers

Alan Turing Institute
The UK's national institute for data science and AI. Publishes research and policy guidance on responsible AI development.
Best for: researchers and policy professionals

Partnership on AI
A multi-stakeholder organisation bringing together industry, civil society and academia to develop responsible AI practices and standards.
Best for: policy professionals

Mozilla Foundation: Trustworthy AI
Research and advocacy on AI accountability, with strong work on the Global South and on the structural conditions that shape AI development.
Best for: general readers and policy professionals

AI Safety South Africa
A Cape Town-based organisation bringing AI safety research and community-building to southern Africa. Hosts events, a fellowship programme and a monthly newsletter.
Best for: researchers, students and policy professionals in South Africa

AI safety reading list
A curated and regularly updated collection of resources on AI safety, compiled by AI Safety South Africa. Covers introductory videos and courses, key papers, career guidance, fellowships and funding opportunities.
Best for: anyone wanting to explore AI safety in depth

Robert Miles AI Safety
A YouTube channel explaining AI safety concepts clearly and accessibly. A good starting point for anyone new to the field.
Best for: general readers and students

Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
One of the founding organisations in AI alignment research. Publishes technical papers and blog posts on fundamental challenges in building safe AI systems.
Best for: researchers

Centre for AI Safety (CAIS)
Publishes research and educational materials on catastrophic AI risks. Their AI Safety Fundamentals course is widely used as an entry point to the field.
Best for: students and researchers

Generative AI in Research
A course developed at UCT on how to use generative AI tools responsibly and effectively in a research context.
Best for: students and researchers

fast.ai
Free, practical courses in deep learning aimed at people with some coding experience. Respected for making AI education accessible without requiring a maths or computer science background.
Best for: students and early-career practitioners

DeepLearning.AI
A wide range of free and paid courses covering AI fundamentals through to specialist topics. Founded by Andrew Ng.
Best for: students and professionals upskilling in AI

Hugging Face
Best known as a model repository, Hugging Face has become an increasingly strong learning platform, with free courses on NLP, transformers and diffusion models. The community aspect adds significant value.
Best for: students and practitioners

Kaggle
Competitions, datasets and free micro-courses on machine learning topics. Particularly good for hands-on, applied learning.
Best for: students and early-career practitioners

3Blue1Brown (YouTube)
Outstanding visual explanations of the mathematics underlying neural networks and machine learning. The "Neural Networks" series is widely regarded as one of the best introductions to the subject.
Best for: students

There's An AI For That
A searchable directory of AI tools organised by task, covering thousands of products across every category. Useful for finding what AI can do in a specific area or industry. See also their newsletter above.
Best for: all audiences