On 10 September 2026 I joined the first of three national webinars in Human Studios’ Lefa AI series, What AI Means for Mzansi’s Classrooms. The session was Navigating AI, Learning and Safety in South African Basic Education. Lefa is a ten-month national initiative convened by Human Studios, with UNICEF South Africa and the DG Murray Trust. It is a sense-making process, not an adoption campaign: research, dialogue and practical conversation while South African schools are already using AI, and while national guidelines are still being written.
I was a panellist on the AI and learning conversation. Shirley Eadie facilitated. My contribution was practical examples, with a limit I wanted on the table early: AI does not improve learning because it provides answers. It helps when it is designed to preserve productive struggle, work within a learner’s zone of proximal development, and leave teachers in charge of judgement. One public example was Cambridge’s Future Educator programme with KFAS in Kuwait, where STEM teachers applied AI through their own subjects rather than sitting through a tour of tools. That programme has no published learning-outcome data, so I offered it as a design story, not as proof of attainment.
Lefa is worth paying attention to because the South African questions are local: eleven official languages, a bimodal school system, teacher capacity that is already uneven, and tools trained somewhere else. If you work in a school, a ministry or an education organisation here, start with the Lefa AI site.