Almost a year after the University of Cape Town (UCT) was announced as Africa’s first-ever host of the Times Higher Education (THE) World Academic Summit, Professor Mosa Moshabela will headline the opening event on 29 September, 2026.

Moshabela, who was installed as UCT’s Vice-Chancellor in 2024, will make opening remarks on the day and set the tone for the first session, which will focus on African experiences, knowledge and institutional realities, while engaging the world in shared questions about the future of universities.

The opening remarks will be followed immediately by a session titled “Higher education in the Intelligent Age: Purpose, people, pedagogy and planet”, which will explore the role and purpose of higher education, and how it has evolved in the past 20 years. Drawing on diverse regional experiences, including African and Global South contexts, this session will explore how universities can harness multiple forms of intelligence – human, social, ecological and technological – to drive innovation that translates into social, policy and entrepreneurial impact. It will confront how to undo the deep-rooted institutional and regulatory systems that drive business-as-usual university settings while examining how institutions can anchor innovation in place, developing graduates and research ecosystems that contribute to inclusive economic development and resilient societies.

Tabled for discussion during this session

• In the Intelligent Age, will universities lead the change or be overtaken by it?
• What is the role of university leadership in place-based innovation and entrepreneurship in contexts of inequality and constraint?
• How can higher education stay relevant to future citizens through transformational and adaptive leadership by linking knowledge creation with pathways to enterprise, employment and social innovation? 
• What does it mean to harness cultural, social and technological intelligence to shape responsible innovation ecosystems?

About Professor Moshabela

In addition to his work as VC of Africa’s top ranked university, Professor Moshabela also serves as Chair of the Governing Board at the National Research Foundation and the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU). IARU is a network of eleven international research-intensive universities from nine countries across the globe. Moshabela's vision as UCT’s VC is to consolidate UCT’s three missions – teaching, research and societal impact – while building a fourth mission to position the university as a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship for Africa, while living and embracing the values of ubuntu.

An esteemed academic and clinician scientist, he is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He has earned multiple awards throughout his career, including the PHILA Annual Award in 2022 by the Public Health Association of South Africa for his contribution to Public Health in South Africa. He also received a Ministerial Special COVID-19 Award in 2020–2021 for COVID-19 Science Communication and Public Engagement.

A medical doctor by profession, his research is focused on the implementation science of health innovations. This is a multidisciplinary practice which seeks to improve the access, quality, equity and the impact of healthcare for especially resource-constrained sub-Saharan African countries.

Primarily, Professor Moshabela’s contribution to health research has been in the improvement of access and quality in healthcare to combat infectious diseases, particularly in relation to HIV and TB, and in the areas of health systems, services and policy research.

He has held a number of scientific grants for his research, mainly from the US National Institutes of Health, Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom (UK) and the National Research Foundation in South Africa. Professor Moshabela also received funding from the SAMRC, the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health and Care Research in the UK, International Development Research Centre of Canada, and more recently, the US Government, Swiss Government, German Government and the European Union.

Globally, he is a member of the international advisory board for the Lancet Healthy Longevity, Lancet commission on synergies between Health Promotion, Universal Healthcare Access and Global Health Security, and the commission of the US National Academies for Science, Engineering and Medicine on the Global Roadmap to Healthy Longevity.

Read Professor Moshabela’s abridged CV.