Bulelani Jili
Assistant Professor
Dr. Bulelani Jili is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he is part of the African Studies Program and an affiliate of the Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) Program. His research interests include Africa-China relations, cybersecurity, ICT development, African political economy, internet policy, Chinese business law, law and development, and privacy law. He is also a member of Smart Africa’s AI Council Working Group on AI Compute Infrastructure and AI Governance, where he contributes to continental discussions surrounding AI capacity, regulation, and technological sovereignty in Africa.
He is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, a Fellow at New America, and an Advisory Board Member of the International Panel on Social Progress. He has previously served as a Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Cybersecurity Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, an Electronic Privacy Information Center Scholar-in-Residence, and a committee member of the IEEE Standards Association’s Global Initiative on AI Systems Ethics. He also conducted research for the European Research Council-funded China, Law, and Development project at Oxford University, a five-year interdisciplinary and multi-sited project examining the legal and institutional foundations of China’s global engagements.
Dr. Jili has advised and contributed expertise to leading governments, international organizations, firms, think tanks, and civil-society institutions, including the American Bar Association, OpenAI, Microsoft, the French government, Freedom House, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, members of the U.S. Senate, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He recently supported an amicus curiae brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Thaler v. Perlmutter, addressing questions of authorship, creativity, copyright, and AI-generated works.
His writing and commentary have appeared in leading academic journals, policy outlets, and media platforms, including African Affairs, Nature, Theory, Culture & Society, The Guardian, Mail & Guardian, Africa Is a Country, Bloomberg, African Business, South China Morning Post, the African Centre for Strategic Studies, Politico, Lawfare, Tech Policy Press, The Economist, the Financial Times, and East Asia Forum. He is a regular speaker and panelist at international conferences and policy forums across Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia.
He is the recipient of numerous honors, including Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship, Berkman Klein Fellowship, Meta Research Ph.D. Fellowship (Inaugural Tech Policy Research Fellow), Google Public Policy Fellowship, International Strategy Forum award,Oppenheimer Graduate Fellowship Fund, Orrick Fellowship, and the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations.
Dr. Jili earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He also earned an M.Phil. from Cambridge University (UK), where he studied as a Standard Bank Africa Chairman’s Scholar. He received a Yenching Scholarship to study at the Yenching Academy of Peking University (China), where he earned an M.A. in Economics. He took an A.B. with honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (College of Social Studies) from Wesleyan University (CT), where he was a Pfeiffer Scholar.
He lives in Washington, DC.