Welcome to the home page of the Southern African Conference for Artificial Intelligence Research

The Southern African Conference for Artificial Intelligence Research is a not-for-profit organization established to annually host the premier Southern African AI Conference. This academic multi- and interdisciplinary event is aimed at bringing together nationally and internationally established and emerging researchers from across various disciplines including Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, Information Systems, Humanities and Philosophy. The conference has a strong focus on growing a formidable network of talented students working in AI from across Africa.

Thus far four SACAIR conferences have been held. The inaugural conference, FAIR2019 (Cape Town, South Africa) the second and third conference, SACAIR2020 and SACAIR2021 (virtual conference), were highly successful. We have since hosted SACAIR2022  as a Hybrid event in Stellenbosch and SACAIR2023 on site in Muldersdrift, Gauteng. Future conferences will be built on the success of these events and will endeavour to grow the conference into a premier AI conference in Southern Africa. SACAIR is a five-day conference, which starts on a Monday with an unconference (a student-driven event for students to interact with each other as well as with sponsors and other possible employers), followed by a full-day of tutorials and a three-day technical conference.

The first two conferences were hosted by the Centre for AI Research (CAIR- cair.org.za). The third and subsequent conferences have been hosted by the SACAIR. The Southern African Conference for Artificial Intelligence Research is a not-for-profit organization established to annually host the premier Southern African AI Conference. The conference will be hosted on a rotational basis by an AI research group in a Southern African university.

The Centre for AI Research (CAIR) will play a nurturing role within SACAIR. CAIR is South African distributed research network that was established in 2011 with the aim of building world-class Artificial Intelligence research capacity in South Africa. CAIR conducts foundational, directed and applied research into various aspects of AI through its nine research groups based at six universities (the University of Pretoria, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, University of the Western Cape and North-West University).