The Global South AI Safety Challenge brings together researchers, engineers, and policy professionals across Latin America, Africa, and Asia to work on AI safety problems that matter most in their regions. Over one weekend, participants will build tools, evaluations, and policy research addressing gaps that the field has overlooked.

This is the first large-scale AI safety hackathon designed for and with the Global South. Participants compete within their region, not globally. The best teams from all regions are invited into the Apart Fellowship for continued research and mentorship.

Top teams get

*Not all winning projects may receive a fellowship invitation. An invitation might also depend on other external factors like the Apart Core team's capacity to onboard new research teams.

Why the Global South?

AI safety research is concentrated in a handful of countries. None of the top 100 institutions by publication count at NeurIPS 2020 or ICML 2020 were based in Africa or Latin America (Chan et al., 2021). Meanwhile, AI risks hit differently in these regions: jailbreaks are more common in low-resource languages, electoral deepfakes have already disrupted elections across Africa, and algorithmic bias trained on non-local data causes real harm in healthcare and hiring.

This hackathon is not about bringing AI safety to the Global South. It is about bringing the Global South into AI safety. Researchers here have contextual knowledge the field needs: regulatory landscapes, language gaps, and institutional constraints that determine whether safety research actually works in practice.

Regional Tracks

Participants compete within their region. Each region has its own winners and prizes. Within each regional track, participants choose a sub-track (Technical AI Safety or AI Governance/Policy).

Track: Latin America

Hubs in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and Merida. Three winning teams ($3,000 total).

Brazil's AI bill (PL 2.338/2023), approved by the Senate and pending Chamber vote, includes a standalone human rights chapter that goes beyond the EU AI Act. Chile became the first country in the world to constitutionally protect neuro-rights. Colombia's CONPES 4144 established a national AI policy framework in early 2025. Projects in this track can address technical safety, governance, or locally tailored problems like AI fairness for Portuguese and Spanish language models, regulatory analysis of emerging legislation, or safety evaluations for AI systems deployed in Latin American contexts.

Track: Africa

Hub in Cape Town. One winning team ($1,000 total).

The African Union adopted a Continental AI Strategy in July 2024, and more than 40 African countries now have data protection laws. But AI systems trained on non-African data produce biased outputs in healthcare, agriculture, and governance. The multilingual safety gap is severe: LLMs generate more false claims in African languages and are easier to jailbreak. Projects can tackle multilingual safety evaluations, AI surveillance and civil liberties, algorithmic bias in low-resource language contexts, or policy tools adapted to the AU framework.

Track: Asia

Hubs in Bengaluru and Shanghai. Two winning teams ($2,000 total).

Asia spans the full spectrum of AI governance approaches. India's "Seven Sutras" framework explicitly prioritizes innovation over restraint. China has enacted more sector-specific AI regulations than any other country. Vietnam's AI law took effect in March 2026, the first binding AI legislation in Southeast Asia. The ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics offers a voluntary regional framework. Projects can address cross-border governance harmonization, safety evaluations for non-English language models, technical AI safety research, or region-specific risk assessments.

Who should participate?

• AI safety researchers and engineers

• Machine learning researchers and engineers

• Policy researchers working on AI governance

• Software engineers interested in safety infrastructure

• Security researchers and red teamers

• Students and early-career researchers exploring AI safety

• Anyone working on AI and its impacts in the Global South

What you will do

Over three days, you will:

1. Form teams and choose a regional track and sub-track

2. Research and scope a specific problem using the provided resources

3. Build a project: a tool, evaluation, policy analysis, or research contribution

4. Submit a research report (PDF) documenting your approach, results, and implications

5. Have your work reviewed by judges from AI safety organizations, universities, and policy institutions in your region

What happens next

After the hackathon, all submitted projects will be reviewed by expert judges. Top projects receive prizes and are featured on the Apart Research website. The most promising teams are invited into the Apart Fellowship for continued research and mentorship.

Organized by

Apart Research

Local hubs: BAISH (Argentina) | EA Brazil | Bogota Hub (Colombia) | AI Safety Mexico | AI Safety South Africa | SAFL (India) | Shanghai Hub (China)