Manamela tells universities to build AI skills, not just police them

Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela has called on universities to prepare students for an increasingly artificial intelligence driven world, while building the skills and research capacity South Africa needs to shape the technology rather than only respond to it.

Delivering a keynote address at the 4th Universities South Africa Higher Education Conference at the CSIR Convention Centre on Wednesday, Manamela said AI is making the traditional role of universities more important, not less. Universities have always done more than transmit information, he said. They teach people to question an argument, test evidence, practise a discipline and take responsibility for what they claim to know.

Artificial intelligence, in his telling, makes those functions more urgent.

He cautioned that AI systems can produce content without establishing whether their claims are true, and can generate answers without understanding the social consequences of acting on them. Their usefulness, he said, does not remove the responsibility to judge them.

Manamela argued that South Africa’s response must extend beyond the familiar question of whether students use the technology to complete assignments. Universities and the country need to consider who develops AI technologies, whose languages and experiences are represented, who controls the infrastructure and who benefits from the knowledge produced.

“We need graduates who can use these tools intelligently and question them competently. We also need researchers capable of helping to build them,” he said.

African language technologies, appropriate datasets, computing capacity and sound research partnerships are of educational and developmental importance, the Minister said. That work, he added, requires the humanities and social sciences alongside engineering and the natural sciences, because questions about bias, power, labour, law and human dignity cannot be settled by computing power alone.

The address pressed universities to move past general discussion and make practical choices about teaching, assessment and research capacity. Technological change will also require people to return to learning throughout their working lives, Manamela said, and universities must consider how to make that possible while maintaining the depth and standards that give their qualifications value.

The conference runs from 7 to 9 October 2026 and brings together university leaders, academics, researchers, professional staff, students, labour representatives and international guests. Its theme, “Co-creating a Resilient Future”, reflects the position that resilience, innovation and renewal are achieved through collaboration.

This report is based on the official summary of the address published by SAnews (South African Government News Agency), not on the full conference record.

Source: SAnews (South African Government News Agency), Universities challenged to prepare graduates for AI-driven future