🌍 A Win for Our Collective Village

📸 Taken by SO. Me on the top of Mapungubwe hill in November 2025.

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The news has been slowly sinking in over the last few days, and to be completely honest, I have battled with feeling worthy of this honour. The South African Presidency has announced that I am a recipient of the Order of Mapungubwe in Silver, the nation’s highest recognition for excellence and exceptional achievement.

When I look at this milestone, I do not see a personal achievement. I see a mirror reflecting a vast, beautiful village of people who chose to build a shared vision together.

This journey spans forty years of life, community, and immense intellectual growth. I am deeply mindful of the principle I was raised with: “To whom much is given, much is expected.” I look back with intense gratitude at the institutions and spaces that nurtured my mind, challenged my thinking, and gave me a place to grow:

• The Foundation: It began with my family, my parents, and the friends I grew up with. You gave me my roots and kept me grounded. To my wife and children, you are my anchor and my “why.”
• The Intellectual Lineage: I am profoundly thankful for every stage of my education and career. From the early days of Primary School and High School where curiosity was first sparked; to Wits University, where I was shaped into a researcher; to Rutgers, which pushed the boundaries of my scientific thinking and allowed me to explore the unknown.
• My Current Homes: Today, I am privileged to see these ideas culminate in my daily homes, at the University of Pretoria, which has backed our Pan-African and global research ambitions, and at Lelapa AI, where we turn research into tangible, real-world impact.
• The Builders & Movements: To the pioneering students, brilliant interns, dedicated lab members, funding partners, and the relentless community advocates within the Deep Learning Indaba and Masakhane, you are the actual engine of this work.

For a long time, the global narrative around Africa has been safely tucked away in the future tense—always focused on its passive “potential” or “promise.” But what we have been experiencing on the ground is something entirely different. It is not passive hope; it is active, intentional execution.

This work takes us across the length and breadth of a continent defined by its endurance and momentum. It starts at home, on the streets of Ga-Rankuwa, moving through the rolling hills of Kigali and the hustle of Nairobi in the East. It sweeps through the noise of Lagos and across the coast of Ghana in the West, a shoreline that carries deep ancestral pain, yet stands as a towering symbol of our unyielding resilience. Finally, it reaches the historic ruins of Egypt in the North.

Everywhere you look, the continent’s action-oriented youth are moving past potential. They are actively building the “African AI We Want”—proving that our languages, our data, and our people belong at the absolute forefront of the global digital frontier.

I carry a deep sense of gratitude for what this continent and its communities have poured into me. It is a debt of grace I can never truly repay, but one I promise to spend the rest of my life working to honour through continued action.

Thank you to everyone who has walked, ran, learned, and dreamed alongside me.

Na khensa. Inkomu.

Official Announcement: https://presidency.gov.za/presidency-announces-recipients-national-orders-0