South Africa Is Going to Silicon Valley to Learn. It Should Be Going to Negotiate.
Without a policy, a mandate or a published delegation list, the President’s AI trip risks bringing home brochures instead of binding terms.
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President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced that, after the local government elections on 4 November, he will lead a group from government, universities, business and youth, along with "some of my comrades", to Silicon Valley. The stated purpose is to meet "those big moguls of artificial intelligence" and to "get to understand exactly how it functions and how we can utilise it to our own benefit". The instinct is sound. The framing is not. A head of state does not need to cross the Atlantic to understand AI. He needs to cross it to agree what AI companies will do in South Africa, on what terms and at what price. On present evidence, the country appears to be going to learn when it should be going to negotiate.
CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND
Reports describe a delegation of government representatives, academics, business leaders, researchers and students, travelling in November. No list of delegates, companies or objectives has been published.
The policy that should anchor such a visit does not yet exist. The draft national AI policy was withdrawn in 2026 after it was found to contain references that could not be verified, and a seven-member expert panel was appointed to rewrite it, with the revised version expected to reach Cabinet in November 2026. That timeline has slipped, and the government now aims to finalise the revised policy by March 2027. The delegation will be shopping before it has written its shopping list.
INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS
The other side of the table will be well prepared. Washington's American AI Exports Program offers partner countries "vertically integrated, off-the-shelf export packages, from chips and data centers to AI models and applications", with at least 51% of hardware value expected to be US-made and models drawn from US-controlled companies. An analyst at the Global Public Policy Institute warns that wider use of the programme could come at the cost of deeper technological dependency and "vulnerability to coercion". A visitor without terms of its own is offered the standard package.
South Africa's position is also unusually tangled. It is a founding member of the China-led World AI Cooperation Organisation, headquartered in Shanghai. At the same time, its trade preferences under AGOA hang on a decision by the US executive. About 86,000 jobs at vehicle manufacturers are tied to the deal, and an exclusion taking effect on 1 January would have to be announced by 2 November. Visiting American firms within weeks of that decision is not merely a learning exercise. It is diplomacy, whether or not anyone calls it that.
Kenya offers a useful contrast. On his recent US tour, President William Ruto arrived with named projects to promote, including talks with Cisco on an AI and cyber centre of excellence and discussions on AI cooperation in health, education and financial services. Not every meeting produced a signed agreement, yet each had a specific purpose.
I have previously written about this when Ramaphosa told BRICS how AI should be governed while his own country still had no national AI policy. The Silicon Valley trip repeats the pattern: international ambition running ahead of domestic preparation.
IMPLICATIONS
The strongest counter-argument deserves weight. Presidential visits open doors that ministers cannot, officials who have seen frontier laboratories may write better policy, and waiting for a finished policy could mean missing an investment cycle. All of this is true. None of it requires travelling without a mandate. A first presidential visit will rarely produce binding contracts, because serious terms usually follow months of technical work. That is a reason to arrive with a mandate, so that the follow-up has a brief. A one-page brief could set out what South Africa wants: data-centre investment tied to local skills targets, data handled in line with POPIA, support for the country's official languages, procurement terms that avoid lock-in, and research partnerships with local universities. It could also state what South Africa offers in return, from critical minerals to a gateway into the rest of the continent.
Much of the learning, meanwhile, is available at home, in universities, research councils and firms already building AI around load-shedding, data protection law and many languages. The delegation should include people who can carry commitments, not only people who can carry the flag.
CLOSING TAKEAWAY
The fairest test is what comes back. Within 30 days of returning, the Presidency should publish a report naming the companies met, the commitments made, the investment amounts and timelines, the data and procurement terms agreed, the skills numbers promised, and what South Africa conceded in return. Boards should read it as they would any supplier negotiation. If no such report appears, the country will have taken a tour rather than made a deal. South Africa's AI future deserves a negotiating position, written down before the plane leaves.
Johan Steyn is a prominent AI thought leader, speaker, and author with a deep understanding of artificial intelligence's impact on business and society. He is passionate about ethical AI development and its role in shaping a better future. Find out more about Johan's work at https://www.aiforbusiness.net
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