Posted:
by QW+ staff writer
The Company We Keep: Athandiwe Saba
Athandiwe Saba is a multi-award-winning journalist and a leading voice at the intersection of AI, data, journalism, and social impact in Africa. She founded the Mail & Guardian’s data desk and has worked at the Sunday Times and City Press. She previously led Africa’s biggest Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) team, the ILAB, focused on fighting information manipulation. Currently, she leads the AI-powered newsroom initiative at Code for Africa, where she is reshaping how technology and data are used to strengthen governance and counter information manipulation.
Pronouns: She/Her
Born: February 1988
Status: Married
School: JG Meiring in Cape Town
University: UNISA and GIBS
First job: A casual worker at McDonald’s, flipping burgers, making sure that the fries were just right, and cleaning toilets. The stories I could tell!
Home: When we moved into our home, I spoke life, light, love, rest and family into our homely space.
Transport: I still own my first car, close to 15 years on.
Book on your bedside table: Just bought the Life Application Bible and going through another Stephen King period.
Music in your playlist: Because I share my music app with my seven-year-old, this playlist includes anything from old school hiphop to KPOP and some Elvis, TEMS, Youssou N’Dour, Bruno Mars, you name it.
Describe your job in no more than seven words: Let’s make the information landscape healthy again
What keeps you awake at night? Am I doing enough…?
Who is your biggest hero? My mother, of course. From a family of matriarchs, it’s an amazing feeling to look up to Black, strong, smart, innovative, and hard-working women who hold family so close. These traits I can take wherever I go in this work and world.
Remote or office? Both… I love being around people who are innovating, thinking, and pushing boundaries, but at the same time I love being able to think in my own space and create.
What’s the most exciting part of your job? The crazy level of technological advancements I witness all the time and how my environment forces me to create new processes for my team to engage and create. I am the one who creates the bridge between what is coming and what is in the information environment.
Career highlight? Establishing the Mail & Guardian Data Desk and actually being recognised internationally for data-driven investigations.
What is your superpower? Always finding a way.
What is the least known fact about you? I am a village girl who fetched water at the river and had to fetch wood for cooking in a rondavel. Love that part of my life.
If you could get the ear of one person, to convince them your work is important, who would it be? The current head of the African Union. The technological advancements in the information landscape have a significant effect on every single part of every African’s life in every country. This could be our (Africa’s) moment yet…
Your best piece of advice? Write it down, then do it. Start—that’s all you have to do; the rest comes.
What’s your next big thing? AI and how Africa builds its own version, no matter how small, in a village, in a newsroom, or in a company. Building something for good in AI.
What do you do to relax? Running, hockey, reading, and playing with my beautiful little boys!