Bulelani Jili
Dr. Bulelani Jili is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he is part of the African Studies Program and an affiliate of the Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) Program. His research examines Africa–China relations, cybersecurity, ICT development, and African political economy. He is also a member of Smart Africa’s AI Council Working Group on AI Compute Infrastructure and AI Governance, where he contributes to continental discussions on AI capacity, regulation, and technological sovereignty in Africa.
He is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, a Fellow at New America, and an Advisory Board Member of the International Panel on Social Progress. He has previously held fellowships at the Atlantic Council, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.–China Relations, and served on the IEEE Standards Association’s Global Initiative on AI Systems Ethics. He also conducted research for the European Research Council-funded China, Law, and Development project at Oxford University.
Dr. Jili has advised governments, international organizations, firms, and civil-society institutions, including the American Bar Association, OpenAI, Microsoft, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the French government, members of the U.S. Senate, Freedom House, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He recently supported an amicus curiae brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Thaler v. Perlmutter, addressing authorship, creativity, copyright, and AI-generated works.
His writing has appeared in African Affairs, Nature, Theory, Culture & Society, The Guardian, Mail & Guardian, Africa Is a Country, Bloomberg, African Business, the South China Morning Post, Politico, Lawfare, Tech Policy Press, The Economist, the Financial Times, and East Asia Forum. He speaks regularly at conferences and policy forums across Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia.
