South Africa’s rewritten national AI policy will only go to cabinet in March 2027, a senior official said. That is about four months later than the government told parliament in May, Business Explainer reported.
The public will only see the document once cabinet clears it for comment.
Jeanette Morwane is the acting deputy director-general at the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT). She is also the project manager for the policy. She set out the new timetable at a South Africa and Finland AI dialogue in Pretoria.
The Finnish embassy hosted the event at the National Research Foundation. Morwane said the drafting team must give the revised policy to Communications Minister Solly Malatsi by 30 November.
Talks within government will follow from December to February, according to the timetable she gave. Cabinet approval in March would mainly allow the policy to be gazetted for public comment.
The department would then gather the public’s submissions. It would send the document back to cabinet for final sign-off. No date has been set for that step.
Morwane said the longer timeline was due to the amount of government process needed before the policy can go to cabinet.
The target has moved before. In September, Malatsi said at GovTech that he aimed to have a draft before cabinet by the end of the financial year in March.
The rewrite follows the failure of the first draft. Malatsi withdrew it 16 days after it was gazetted. This came after News24 reported that its reference list contained fake sources.
Some of those sources were credited to journals that never published the work. The minister said the failure went beyond a technical lapse. Two officials were suspended.
The withdrawn version had proposed a National AI Commission, an AI Ethics Board and an AI Regulatory Authority. It also proposed tax breaks, grants and subsidies.
In May, Malatsi appointed a seven-member expert panel. It is chaired by Benjamin Rosman of Wits University’s Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery Institute.
The other members are Vukosi Marivate, Alison Gillwald, Heather Irvine, Tshepo Feela, Jabu Mtsweni and Lufuno Tshikalange. Each panel member wrote advisory notes for the minister.
A drafting team led by the DCDT is now studying those notes. It includes the Presidency, the State Security Agency and two other departments. A plan for putting the policy into action is being drafted at the same time.
The new draft focuses on control over computing power and data. It also covers large language models that work in South Africa’s official languages. Morwane said investment in computing infrastructure was a big need.
Research firm MarketsandMarkets values South Africa’s AI market at about R50-billion in 2026. It expects the market to grow to about R301-billion by 2031.
Until a final policy is in place, companies and state bodies that use AI rely on self-regulation.
A slide shown at the Pretoria event said South Africa leads the region in AI readiness, but its neighbours are moving faster. It cited Egypt’s Karnak, a national large language model unveiled in February.
Source: this article is based on reporting by Business explainer. Image: Business explainer. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Technology desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Werner Jacobs covers technology for Tzaneen Voice. Werner reports on mobile networks, data prices, internet access, smartphones, apps, AI, cybersecurity and South African tech companies. Each story explains what a new product, price change or policy means for ordinary users in South Africa.