By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita has been named as a commissioner on the AI for Good Global Commission, an initiative of the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union charged with expanding digital access, strengthening trust and accelerating economic impact through responsible AI.
The Commission is made up of more than 40 founding members, and brings together leaders from government, business and international organisations to unlock AI’s potential.
It builds on the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, which helped shape global priorities for extending digital inclusion and economic development.
The commission was launched last Thursday and is co-chaired by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, with ITU secretary-general Doreen Bogdan-Martin as vice chair.
A key focus of the commission will be bridging the digital divide: 2.2 billion people worldwide remain offline, cutting a quarter of the world’s population off from AI’s advances — a challenge squarely in MTN’s wheelhouse given its footprint across African markets where fewer than 30% of people access the internet. The body builds on the ITU/Unesco Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, which helped shape global priorities for connectivity and digital inclusion.
“It’s an honour to be one of the founding commissioners of the AI for Good Global Commission,” Mupita said in a statement on Monday. “At MTN Group, we believe that the developments in AI have the potential to advance health, education, food security and industrial productivity. AI must be safe, ethical and globally inclusive. These perspectives align fully with the work of this global commission.”
Mupita joins a heavyweight roster of founding members, which include Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Microsoft president Brad Smith, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Cohere co-founder Aidan Gomez, alongside the presidents of Estonia and Iceland, ArcelorMittal executive chairman Lakshmi Mittal, African Union infrastructure commissioner Lerato Mataboge and policymakers from Kazakhstan, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Nigeria. Notably absent from the founding list are OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta.