First Call for Papers

The Organising Committee of the South African Conference for Artificial Intelligence Research (SACAIR) invites the submission of full papers for presentation at the 7th Southern African Conference for Artificial Intelligence SACAIR2026, hosted by the University of the KwaZulu-Natal. The conference will be held from 30 November – 4 December 2026 in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

The SACAIR series of conferences is the premier Artificial Intelligence conference in Southern Africa that has been held since 2019 and provides a platform for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to meet and share cutting-edge developments. It provides a publishing venue for Artificial Intelligence researchers from across the academy and thus aims to promote multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary research and collaboration. The conference will bring together nationally and internationally established and emerging researchers from various disciplines, including Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, Informatics, Humanities, Philosophy and Law.

The conference theme, Power, Justice, and the Governance of AI has not been more relevant than now, as generative AI permeates through society at an unprecedented rate. The rapid global deployment of powerful AI systems is triggering critical challenges for all sectors of society. Regulatory frameworks are struggling to keep pace with technological development; a handful of corporations and states command disproportionate influence over the direction of AI; and the consequences of governance failure—algorithmic bias, automated misinformation, mass surveillance, and autonomous harm—fall disproportionately on those least able to bear them. These problems demand a genuinely interdisciplinary response: one that draws simultaneously on computer science, information systems, philosophy, and law, and one that insists on the perspectives of the Global South as central rather than peripheral to the conversation.

SACAIR 2026 calls on researchers across all disciplines to engage with AI governance as a shared challenge. Computer scientists are developing technical tools for auditing, explainability, and safety certification; legal scholars are debating and crafting regulatory frameworks and accountability mechanisms; information systems researchers are studying how organisations adopt, resist, and subvert AI governance; philosophers are clarifying the values at stake and the ethical principles that should anchor policy. In the Southern African context, these questions acquire particular urgency: as nations across the continent navigate the adoption of AI systems largely developed elsewhere, questions of data sovereignty, technological self-determination, algorithmic justice, and AI for inclusive development become inseparable from broader questions of social justice. It is hoped that SACAIR 2026 will provide a forum where African voices can shape a more equitable AI future.

The conference welcomes significant, previously unpublished, contributions to all major fields of artificial intelligence in theoretical, application and practical aspects. We especially invite original contributions that speak to the conference theme and, in particular, trans-disciplinary research contributions.