Alison Gillwald
Distinguished Research Fellow; Executive Director, Research ICT Africa
Alison Gillwald (PhD) is the founding director of Research ICT Africa (RIA), a 30-year-old African digital and data policy and regulatory think tank with the mission of accelerating digital inequality and data justice. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, where she convenes a doctoral programme on the digital economy and society.
Her applied research and practice continue to focus on digital equality and data justice, as well as on internet, data and AI governance at the national, continental and international levels. During South Africa’s Presidency of the G20 this year, she has served as an advisor to the Government on the High-Level Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, Data Governance, Innovation for Sustainable Development and the G20 Digital Economy Work Group, leading RIA’s role as the only African knowledge partner across all priority areas. She also co-chairs the T20 Task Force on Digital Transformation.
She also led the RIA team commissioned by UNESCO to prepare a position paper on information integrity for the Brazilian G20, and served on the Brazilian T20. She has been active in the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), most recently co-leading the Algorithmic Transparency in the Public Sector project. She also co-led the Data Justice work of the Data Governance Working Group. She is also a past deputy chairperson of Giganet, the only dedicated Internet Governance academic policy research conference. She serves on the International Telecommunications Union Academic Advisory Body.
Over three decades, she has also been commissioned and partnered with UNCTAD, UNDP, UNDESA, UNECA, UN Women, The World Bank, and The African Development Bank. Gillwald led RIA’s technical assistance to the African Union Commission on the AU Data Policy Framework and implementation plan. She has served on the Digital Inclusion Roundtable of the UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation. She was also appointed by the then President of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to the four-member Multistakeholder Committee, to enhance multistakeholder participation as part of the organisational review following the IANA transition.
Prior to joining UCT, Gillwald was Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management, where she was the founding director of the Learning Information Networking and Knowledge (LINK) Centre in 1999, with the purpose of fast-tracking ICT policy and regulatory training in Southern Africa. Before joining Wits, she was appointed by President Mandela through the first democratic Parliament to serve on the founding Council of the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA). The body was responsible for implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which introduced a dedicated sector regulator in South Africa and opened the mobile telecommunications market. Before that, she established the Policy Department in the first independent broadcasting regulator, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) in 1995, where she was responsible for coordinating the Triple Inquiry Report into the viability of public broadcasting, local content, and cross-media ownership. This was preceded by her appointment to the Advisory Board of the Independent Media Commission, which was responsible for ensuring equitable coverage of political parties by the media in the first democratic elections. In 2000, she was appointed to the African Communication Ministers’ Advisory Group, and in 2002, she was appointed by the then Minister of Communications to chair the South African Digital Broadcasting Advisory Body, which reported to Cabinet in 2003.
In 2004, she was appointed to the board of the public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and was reappointed to serve in 2008. She has also served on the boards of the AVUSA publishing house, the Media Monitoring Project, and is currently on the board of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Canada. She has provided technical assistance, been commissioned, and consulted for the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the Competition Commission, the Department of Trade and Industry, the South African Presidency, and the Department of Finance (Treasury) on administrative pricing in infrastructure industries. She played a key role in developing the digital strategy and the National Development Plan. She provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Communication on the National Broadband Policy and Plan and SA Connect. She was subsequently appointed deputy chairperson to the Broadband Advisory Council.
Gillwald has a doctorate from the University of Witwatersrand and an MA in Politics from the University of Natal. She also holds an Honours degree in African Politics and Journalism from Rhodes University. She is published in the areas of gender, geopolitics, political economy, and development.
