Vukosi Marivate (born in Ga-Rankuwa, South Africa) is a South African computer scientist who holds the ABSA-UP Chair of Data Science and serves as Professor of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria (UP). He is known for his pioneering work in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), especially in natural language processing (NLP) for African and other low-resource languages. He is a co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba, Lelapa AI, the Masakhane Research Foundation, and leads the Data Science for Social Impact research group at UP. In 2026, he was appointed to the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
Vukosi Marivate was born in Ga-Rankuwa, a township north of Pretoria, South Africa. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (Information Option) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), where he undertook his MasterâÂÂs under the supervision of Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala. In 2009, he began doctoral studies (PhD) at Rutgers University in New Jersey as a Fulbright Science and Technology Scholar, supervised by Prof. Michael Littman, earning his PhD in Computer Science.
Marivate joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria, where he rose to the rank of Professor and holds the ABSA-UP Chair of Data Science. He leads the Data Science for Social Impact research group, applying ML and AI techniques to societal challenges such as public safety, energy, and utilities, with a special focus on enhancing methods, tools, and datasets for low-resource and local African languages.
He has served as a participant and speaker at national and international consortia, including the DS-I Africa ConsortiumâÂÂs Second Meeting in 2022, and has been profiled by the World Economic Forum and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
MarivateâÂÂs research centres on the intersection of ML/AI and NLP, striving to make AI technologies inclusive of African languages such as isiZulu, Sepedi, and Setswana. He is:
Through these roles, he has contributed to open-science datasets, models, and tools, and he actively collaborates with industry and government to translate research into real-world impact.
His research focuses on ML and AI methods that address societal challenges, with a special emphasis on NLP for African languages. In particular, he works to improve models and data availability for low-resource African languages. For example, he co-founded the Masakhane research community to build NLP tools and datasets for languages such as isiZulu, Sepedi and Setswana, and the Deep Learning Indaba conference to strengthen the African AI research community. His approach consistently highlights inclusion and ethics: in a 2025 panel he discussed how licensing and data access should balance innovation with protecting community interests in African language datasets. Overall, MarivateâÂÂs work is characterised by bridging cutting-edge AI research with local African contexts, ensuring that AI systems are inclusive of AfricaâÂÂs languages and needs.
Marivate is a coâÂÂfounder of Lelapa AI, an African AI startup. LelapaâÂÂs mission is âÂÂto use African talent and perspectives to build distinctly African solutions for African problems.â In practice, Lelapa describes itself as a âÂÂsocially grounded AfricaâÂÂcentric AI research & product labâ that develops technology for African businesses, governments and nonâÂÂprofits. The company explicitly aims to attract top African AI talent back to the continent by working on problems local researchers care about.
The startup is building NLP models for under-resourced African languages, supporting communicationin local language. Marivate serves as one of LelapaâÂÂs co-founders (alongside several other AI leaders), and he has said the companyâÂÂs goal is to ensure âÂÂAfrican needs and values [are] at the forefront of AI advancements.âÂÂ