Shamira Ahmed

Shamira Ahmed is the founder and executive director of the Data Economy Policy Hub (DepHUB), South Africa’s first independent think tank established by an Indigenous woman. She was a 2023 Internet Society Mid-Career Fellow and a 2024 Policy Leader Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI), where she focused on transnational internet governance, “ICT” (information and communication technology) geopolitics, digital inequities and ethical digital transformation.

Ahmed serves as the inaugural Global Chair of the EU’s Digital for Development (D4D) Hub Civil Society and Academia Advisory Group (CSAAG) and is a member of several global multi-stakeholder groups advocating for human rights-based digital governance.

A policy entrepreneur and quantitative economist, Ahmed has led multinational, policy-driven research and contributed to key publications, including the African Union Commission’s “Data Policy Framework” and the Global Partnership on AI’s “Towards Real Diversity and Gender Equality in Artificial Intelligence”. In 2025, she co-authored UNESCO’s brief on “Human Rights–Centred Global Governance of Quantum Technologies”.