Africa’s long ambition to leap from consumer to creator in the digital age gained fresh momentum this week, as Google.org awarded US$1 million in core funding to the Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
The grant marks a pivotal moment for African artificial intelligence research. It is not just an investment in algorithms, but in people in the scientists, thinkers and policymakers who will shape how intelligence, natural and artificial is understood and applied across the continent.
A young institute with exponential reach
The Wits MIND Institute, launched in November 2024, has grown at a speed unusual for academic ventures. Building on more than a decade of Wits University’s investment in postgraduate education, capacity building and pan-African AI networks, it now serves as a magnet for Africa’s leading AI minds.
At its helm is Professor Benjamin Rosman, freshly named to the TIME100 AI 2025 list in the Thinkers category. Prof Rosman’s recognition is a signal that Africa is no longer at the periphery of the AI conversation. Instead, it is pressing its way to the table.
The institute’s inaugural class of 34 MIND Fellows includes National Research Foundation-rated scholars, research Chairs and early-career innovators drawn from every faculty at Wits. Their diversity is not symbolic, it fuels a rare cross-pollination between engineering and the humanities, neuroscience and law, computer science and the arts.
Already, more than 25 collaborative projects are underway, ranging from reinforcement learning to digital humanities. The MINDFund, the institute’s seed fund, has begun backing five experimental projects, each pushing at the edge of what intelligence human or machine might mean in an African context.
Google’s signal of intent
For Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, the support is strategic. In Africa, where more than 1.4 billion people live across cultures, languages and histories, AI cannot simply be imported. It must be designed, taught and governed with context. This is precisely the philosophy at the heart of MIND.
As Rosman explains:
“The Wits MIND Institute was conceived to place African researchers at the forefront of the understanding and study of intelligence natural and artificial. Google.org’s support cements our capacity to train talent, incubate disruptive ideas, and ensure our discoveries translate into societal benefit.”
A legacy of innovation, a new frontier
For Wits University, this is also a continuation of history. “From developing South Africa’s first computer to pioneering RADAR,” recalls Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Wits’ Vice-Chancellor, “our institution has stood at the cusp of global technological change. The MIND Institute is our next bold step and this funding reinforces that vision.”
With such backing, the Institute is not simply producing research papers. It is building Africa’s AI governance frameworks, training the continent’s next generation of thinkers and convening policymakers, industry and academia in the same rooms a kind of dialogue rarely seen elsewhere.
Africa has often been cast as a latecomer to technology. But in AI, the timing is different. By shaping models, policies and ethics early on, the continent has a chance to avoid dependence and instead set standards rooted in its diversity.
This is the opportunity the Wits MIND Institute is seizing to ensure Africa has both a voice and influence as the world’s most powerful technology unfolds.
Applications for the next MIND Fellows cohort will open this September 2025. Researchers, entrepreneurs and policymakers are invited to join the growing ecosystem.
The Wits MIND Institute is still young, but its ambition is continental. And with Google.org’s support, it now has the fuel to turn ambition into action.
