Alison Gillwald is the Executive Director of Research ICT Africa (RIA): an African digital policy and regulatory think-tank that works across 20 African countries. Together with DIRSI and LIRNEasia, RIA is responsible for the African component of the Global South After Access Survey. She is also adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance where she supervises doctoral students undertaking transdisciplinary research in digital policy regulation and data governance. A former regulator, she was appointed to the founding Council of the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA) in 1997, having headed the policy department at the first broadcasting regulator, the Independent Broadcasting Authority established in 1994. She has advised the South African Presidency, the National Planning Commission, the Competition Commission and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, in addition to the African Union Commission, SADC, CRASA and the SADC Parliamentary Forum. She has been commissioned by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the World Bank, and the African Development Bank to undertake research to inform policy across a number of Africa countries, and collaborates with networks across the Global South to build an evidence base for policymakers and regulators. She sits on the ITU Indicators Expert Group, is a UNESCO nominee to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and serves on the contact group of the Internet & Jurisdiction policy network. She was appointed on the first ITU Gender Task Force, and has served as the chairperson of the South African Digital Migration Task Team, the Expert Advisory Group to African Ministers of Communications, and as the deputy-chairperson of the SA Ministerial Broadband Advisory Council. The has served on the board of the public broadcaster, the SABC, AVUSA, the Media Monitoring Project and Womensnet. She is the vice-chairperson of Giganet, the only international academic conference dedicated to internet governance and serves on a number of journal editorial committees.