Bongani Mapumulo

Bongani is a disability rights advocate from an interdisciplinary academic background in the social sciences, communication, health systems and policy analysis sectors. His work is grounded in questions of justice, power, and inclusion, with a particular focus on emerging and assistive technologies, health equity, and digital ethics in low - and middle-income country contexts. Bongani’s research interrogates how innovation systems and institutional practices can either reproduce exclusion or be re-imagined to advance dignity, access, and the rights of persons with disabilities.

Drawing on both lived experience and critical scholarship, Bongani approaches disability not as a technical problem to be solved, but as a lens through which to rethink innovation, care, and governance. As a wheelchair user at the UCT Graduate School of Business, Bongani is actively engaged in examining how higher education institutions can move beyond compliance-based accessibility toward more relational, enabling support systems for students with disabilities.