Singularity Summit South Africa 2026: Full Programme Revealed

With more than 40 speakers from around the world, Singularity Summit South Africa 2026 has published its full programme, and the questions have changed. Boardrooms no longer ask whether artificial intelligence will touch their organisations. They want to know where to invest, how to implement it and how to bring their people with them.

From Curiosity to Commitment

A year or two ago, the Singularity Summit has had AI conversation’s in most South African boardrooms was mostly theory. Today it is about budgets. That shift is what shapes Singularity Summit South Africa 2026, which returns to the Sandton Convention Centre on Wednesday 21 and Thursday 22 October with its full programme now confirmed.

Old Mutual presents the Summit, with Google Cloud and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) as event sponsors and UBU as metaverse partner. Over two days, the programme looks at the technologies and ideas changing business and society, and at the harder question of what leaders should actually do about them.

“The conversation around technology has shifted significantly. Business leaders are no longer asking whether AI and other exponential technologies will affect their organisations, but where to invest, how to implement them effectively and how to prepare their people for the changes ahead.”

-Mic Mann, who leads Singularity South Africa with Shayne Mann, puts the change plainly

A Line Up Built on Range

The final names cover a wide spread of disciplines. Felix Cheung, founder and CEO of the Bairong Group in China, joins biotech entrepreneur Kim Hulett, founder of Next Biosciences. Also new to the bill are Ran Neuner, founder of Crypto Banter; global investor and former chief investment officer Hywel George; creator economy specialist Marko Stavrou; Rajesh Pasungili, founder and CEO of Resolute Education; and Shayne Mann, who is also CEO of Mann Made.

They join speakers announced earlier: AI specialists Amanda Manna and Dario Fanucchi, robotics pioneer Tilly Lockey, enterprise AI leader Barak Kaufman, digital transformation expert Valter Adão, Hamed Kazim and South African inventor Fana Shabane. Poet, author and broadcaster Lebo Mashile returns as the Summit’s Poet and MC. Her presence reminds delegates that the future is a cultural question as well as a technical one.

The mix is deliberate. Fintech, biotech, digital assets, education and the creator economy each show a different way exponential technology is already making money, and changing how that money is made.

The Implementation Problem

Artificial intelligence is at the centre of the programme, and the focus is practical. Speakers will look at how fast AI is evolving and at a gap many organisations now know well: moving enterprise AI out of the pilot phase and into daily operations. They will also consider what the next generation of AI could mean for companies and the people who work in them.

From there, the programme widens to digital transformation, leadership, entrepreneurship, investment, robotics, the future of cities and the skills needed in an economy increasingly run on technology. Keynotes are paired with panel discussions that put different viewpoints side by side. AI workshops and masterclasses offer hands-on learning, and an interactive expo shows emerging technologies up close.

People Before Platforms

The most pointed contribution comes from Old Mutual. Celiwe Ross, the group’s Chief Human Capital and Corporate Affairs Officer, argues that technology alone will not define what comes next. “The future is not only about the technologies we adopt, but about how we equip our people to grow, respond and lead in an environment that is constantly changing,” she says.

She is just as direct about who comes out ahead. “The organisations that thrive will be those that prepare their people and their cultures for change, rather than simply preparing for the next technology.”

It is a useful correction. Much of the global AI debate is about capability. Ross is making a case about readiness, and in a country with South Africa’s skills pressures that case matters more than most.

Seen From the Continent

The Summit brings international expertise to Johannesburg, but it also looks at these shifts from an African point of view. Its sessions ask how businesses on the continent can use new technologies, where new openings for innovation and investment are appearing, and how African entrepreneurs can have more say in the global technology landscape.

That framing gives the event its purpose. Africa is not simply adopting technology built somewhere else. It has its own markets, constraints and talent, and those shape what gets built here. Sandton, the country’s financial centre, is a natural place for that conversation.

The Advantage of Knowing Why

Shayne Mann describes the aim simply: for delegates “to leave better informed, better connected and with a clearer sense of where the opportunities lie.” As the novelty wears off and results start to matter, that clarity is worth more than any single product demo. The leaders who do well will not necessarily be the ones who adopted first. They will be the ones who understood soonest what the technology is for.