Ramaphosa leads South African Silicon Valley AI delegation

The South African Presidency has announced that President Cyril Ramaphosa will lead a multi-stakeholder delegation to Silicon Valley in the United States from 15 to 21 November 2026 to engage technology companies, investors, researchers and AI specialists.

• The delegation will take part in engagements across Silicon Valley from 16 to 20 November, including Semafor: Silicon Valley and the World on 16 November, Stanford University on 17 November, a San Jose workshop on 18 November, visits to Alphabet, Google and Cisco on 19 November, and Palo Alto Networks plus the Microsoft Experiential Center on 20 November.
• The visit will focus on AI development, regulation, skills, digital infrastructure, data centers, computing capacity and energy supply, while also examining cyber resilience, digital sovereignty, higher education, small business innovation and governance; the Presidency cited global AI investment figures of US$650 billion in planned 2026 hyperscaler capex and US$259 billion in 2025 venture capital investment in AI.