Vukosi Marivate
Professor of computer science at the University of Pretoria and director of AfriDSAI
A South African professor and co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba, Masakhane and Lelapa AI, building language technology for African languages.
Biography
Vukosi Marivate is a South African computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Pretoria, where he holds the ABSA-UP Chair of Data Science. Born in Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa, he earned a BSc in electrical engineering and a master's at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a PhD in computer science at Rutgers University as a Fulbright fellow, supervised by Michael L. Littman.
He directs the African Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AfriDSAI) and leads the Data Science for Social Impact research group. His research focuses on natural language processing for African and other low-resource languages. He is a co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba, the Masakhane Research Foundation and Lelapa AI, an African AI company focused on language technologies. In 2026 the South African President awarded him the Order of Mapungubwe (Silver) for pioneering contributions to data science and AI in Africa, and he was appointed to the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence.
Notable contributions
Co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba
Co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba, an initiative that supports AI and machine learning communities across Africa.
Co-founded Masakhane and Lelapa AI
Co-founded the Masakhane Research Foundation, a community building open NLP tools and datasets for African languages, and Lelapa AI, an African company developing language technologies.
Awarded the Order of Mapungubwe (Silver)
Awarded in 2026 by the President of South Africa for pioneering contributions to data science and AI in Africa.
Appointed to the UN scientific panel on AI
Appointed in 2026 to the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence.