The Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) is organizing its third conference with the theme “Digitally Human, Artificially Intelligent”. The field of Digital Humanities is currently still rather underdeveloped in Southern Africa. Hence, this conference has several aims. First, to bring together researchers who are interested in showcasing their research from the broad field of Digital Humanities. By doing so, this conference provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art of Digital Humanities especially in the Southern Africa region. This includes Digital Humanities research by people from Southern Africa or research related to the geographical area of Southern Africa. The DHASA conference is an interdisciplinary platform for researchers working on all areas of Digital Humanities (including, but not limited to language, literature, visual art, performance and theatre studies, media studies, music, history, sociology, psychology, language technologies, library studies, philosophy, methodologies, software and computation, etc.). It aims to create the conditions for the emergence of a scientific Digital Humanities community of practice.

Southern Africa has experienced drought-flood cycles for the past decade that strain the ability of any country to properly manage water resources. This dynamic is exacerbated by human drivers such as the heavy reliance of sectors such as mining and agriculture on groundwater and surface water, as well as subsistence agriculture in rural areas along rivers. These factors have progressively depleted natural freshwater systems and contributed to an accumulation of sediment in river systems. In a region where two or more countries share many of the groundwater and surface resources, water security cuts across the socioeconomic divide and is both a rural and urban issue. For example, the City of Cape Town had to heavily ration all water uses in 2017 and 2018, as its dams were drying up.

A lost city dating back to the 1400s hidden underneath the South African landscape has been brought back to life by experts. Researchers found ruins of the settlement known as Kweneng just south of Johannesburg using Lidar, a combination of'light' and'radar' technology. The Kweneng ruins are one of several large settlements occupied by Tswana-speakers that dotted the northern parts of South Africa for generations. In the 1820s all these Tswana city states collapsed in what became known as the Difaqane civil wars. After this time, the ruins were overgrown with vegetation until, in 2018, experts used laser technology to rediscover the lost Kweneng settlement.

Drones have the potential to play a big role in protecting endangered species, with a number of trials being conducted to investigate how small aerial surveillance aircraft can be used to combat poaching. The latest effort involves the use of artificial intelligence software to quickly identify poachers and animals in drone footage, in an attempt to better protect elephants and rhinos. Developed by Neurala, the software will be used by the Lindbergh Foundation in its efforts to combat poaching. It's designed to keep an eye on video as it's streamed back to researchers from drones in the field and identify animals, vehicles and poachers in real time without any human input. The software can analyze regular or infrared footage, so works with video taken day or night.