We live in an age of extraordinary technological possibility, surrounded by an almost constant flow of information. Knowledge can travel across continents in seconds, AI promises to transform how we learn and work, and the boundaries that once constrained human communication appear increasingly permeable. Yet beneath this remarkable progress lie questions that have perhaps never been more consequential. Whose knowledge matters?

Who possesses the authority to recognize it? And what happens to human potential when the power to determine its legitimacy rests in the hands of a privileged few? These questions were at the heart of this year’s Groningen Declaration Network (GDN) conference in Cape Town, South Africa. And perhaps few places could provide a more appropriate setting for such conversations.

I do not pretend to fully understand the experiences, struggles, or aspirations of the peoples of the African continent, much less the particular histories of the communities that make up what we know today as South Africa. I remain conscious of the distance between hearing another person’s experience and understanding the reality of having lived it. Yet something became increasingly evident to me over the course of the conference. Across the presentations and discussions, I heard distinct and authentic voices returning to a common concern – the enduring consequences of oppression, the inequalities that persist across generations, and the determination that the structures of the future must not reproduce the injustices of the past.

Oppression leaves an indelible imprint, one that persists long after the political and institutional structures responsible for it have been dismantled. These imprints live in the memory of place and extend through time, shaping the circumstances and opportunities of generations who may never have experienced the original injustice Throughout history, place and space have been used as instruments of exclusion and displacement. Land has been appropriated, communities uprooted, and boundaries established to determine not only where people may live, but also the opportunities available to them. Such histories cannot simply be erased through political reform or the passage of time. Their consequences remain embedded in the social, economic, and institutional arrangements that govern people’s lives in the ever present now.

South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994 was a profound historical achievement. Yet the dismantling of an oppressive political system does not, in itself, eliminate the conditions it created. The legacy of apartheid remains evident in economic disparities, unequal educational opportunities, and structural barriers that continue to constrain human flourishing. Nor is this experience unique to South Africa. Across the world, societies continue to contend with the consequences of colonialism, dispossession, segregation, and institutional exclusion. Although these histories differ considerably, their imprints remain present in the lives of people and communities whose opportunities continue to be shaped by the past. Perhaps, then, the deeper measure of liberation is not simply the removal of oppressive structures, but the emancipation of human capacity and potential. Political freedom is essential, but it is incomplete without meaningful opportunities for people to develop their capabilities, exercise agency, and participate in shaping their own futures. This distinction matters because the formal recognition of equality does not necessarily translate into the conditions required for people to realize their potential. It is within this historical and human context that discussions of decolonizing recognition, Indigenous knowledge systems, sovereignty, and inclusion take on a significance that extends well beyond educational policy or the technical administration of credentials. Among the many contributions that stayed with me was that of MNTWANAR WISEMAN ZULU, whose presentation challenged conventional assumptions about the authority to recognize knowledge. His discussion of Indigenous Recognition Systems raised a fundamental question – why should legitimate systems of knowledge and recognition be required to seek validation from established institutions whose authority emerged from different historical, cultural, and political traditions?

For those of us whose professional lives have unfolded within universities and established educational institutions, this is an uncomfortable but necessary question. Recognition is not an entirely neutral exercise. To recognize learning is to exercise judgment about what constitutes knowledge, what evidence is considered sufficient, and whose standards of correctness should prevail. These judgments have consequences. They can facilitate access to education, employment, professional mobility, and participation in society. Equally, they can perpetuate exclusion when legitimate forms of knowledge fall outside the categories and standards through which institutions determine what deserves recognition. Yet the aspiration toward open and sovereign recognition presents a paradox of its own. If communities and institutions possess legitimate authority to recognize knowledge according to their own traditions and standards, how can that recognition travel beyond their boundaries without becoming subordinate to the authority of another system? Mobility requires some measure of shared understanding and acceptance, but this need not imply conformity. Perhaps the more productive question is how different recognition authorities might develop reciprocal arrangements that preserve their autonomy while establishing sufficient trust, evidence, and accountability to make recognition meaningful across systems.

These questions also connect directly with the work my colleagues (SIMONE RAVAIOLI and JAMES KEEVY) and I presented at the conference. Our research examines the relationship between AI, semantic alignment, and standards of correctness in the identification and recognition of skills. At the centre of this work is an important distinction – identifying similarity is not equivalent to exercising judgment. A word is not necessarily a skill, a semantic match is not evidence of competence, and a technically plausible interpretation does not, by itself, constitute a defensible act of recognition. Meaning depends on context, purpose, and the conditions under which an interpretation can be justified. This distinction becomes especially important as AI assumes a greater role in extracting skills, interpreting qualifications, and facilitating recognition across languages, institutions, and cultures.

The potential benefits are considerable. Knowledge and capabilities acquired through employment, community engagement, informal learning, and lived experience may become more visible. Barriers to educational and professional mobility may be reduced. Forms of knowledge that have historically been overlooked by conventional recognition systems may finally receive the consideration they deserve.

But technological possibility should never be confused with inevitable human progress.

For all its promise, the development of contemporary AI is increasingly concentrated within a small number of extraordinarily powerful corporations and the financial and political interests that surround them. A relatively small group of corporate and technological elites, arguably an emerging oligarchy, exercises disproportionate influence over the systems through which information is produced, interpreted, and increasingly used to inform decisions affecting human lives. These frontier models do not exist independently of the social and political circumstances in which they are developed. They carry the influence of the data on which they are trained, the commercial interests that finance their development, and the priorities of those who determine how they are deployed. Their apparent universality can obscure significant inequalities in the representation of languages, cultures, and knowledge traditions. More troubling is the extent to which the experiences and interests of marginalized and historically oppressed communities may remain secondary to the economic and political ambitions of those who control these technologies.

There is a profound contradiction here. Technologies celebrated for their capacity to democratize knowledge may simultaneously concentrate the authority to interpret and validate it. The ability to process information at an unprecedented scale does not necessarily bring with it an equivalent capacity for understanding context, exercising sound judgment, or recognizing the legitimacy of different knowledge traditions. Nor does it guarantee that the benefits of these technologies will be distributed equitably. We therefore need to ask not simply what AI can accomplish, but whose interests it serves, whose assumptions it privileges, and whether it expands or further restricts the conditions necessary for human flourishing. The risk is that technologies intended to improve access and recognition may reproduce existing inequalities, this time through systems whose apparent technical objectivity conceals the human judgments, political priorities, and economic interests embedded within them. None of this diminishes the extraordinary possibilities of AI. It does, however, make the responsibility to shape its development and use more urgent. Technological innovation cannot be separated from questions of governance, legitimacy, and accountability, particularly when the technologies involved increasingly mediate how human knowledge and capabilities are interpreted and valued.

In reflecting on these discussions, I find myself returning to the aspirations of lifelong learning that gained international prominence during the 1970s. The humanistic vision articulated in UNESCO’s Learning to Be was never simply about acquiring new skills, responding to labour-market demands, or accumulating educational credentials. It reflected a more expansive understanding of education as a lifelong process associated with personal development, social participation, and the realization of human potential.

At its foundation was an emancipatory aspiration, education should not be confined to particular institutions, privileged segments of society, or prescribed stages of life. Rather, the opportunity to learn and develop one’s capabilities should remain available throughout life. The recognition of learning, regardless of where or how it occurs, is an important part of that aspiration because opportunities are often determined not only by what people know or are capable of doing, but by whether others acknowledge the legitimacy of that knowledge. More than half a century later, much of this aspiration remains unfulfilled. Indeed, there is a certain irony in our present circumstances. At the very moment when technological developments could make the recognition of human capacity more inclusive, accessible, and responsive to the diversity of human experience, we confront new concentrations of power that may determine whose knowledge is made visible and whose remains unrecognized.

The struggle for meaningful recognition is, in this respect, inseparable from the broader struggle for human emancipation.

This was my second encounter with the GDN community, following our presentation in Oslo last year. What I find increasingly compelling is not simply the technical expertise represented within this international network (of-networks), but its willingness to engage with questions that extend beyond the conventional boundaries of credentials, qualifications, and interoperability. The closing discussions reinforced the need to move beyond credential evaluation toward a broader understanding of lifelong learning, including what it might mean to approach recognition from a decolonizing perspective. This requires attention to the wider story of learning, including work, community participation, and lived experience.

One observation from these discussions particularly stayed with me that being that “different ways of knowing require different ways of thinking”. I would add that they may also require different ways of recognizing.

Honouring Indigenous knowledge systems cannot simply mean translating their knowledge into the categories of an established qualifications framework. It requires a more pluralistic approach in which communities and knowledge traditions retain legitimate authority while developing opportunities for reciprocal recognition. Here, the tension between mobility and meaning becomes particularly important. What makes knowledge portable across systems may also remove the context that gives it significance in the first place. Our challenge is to enable mobility without making conformity the price of recognition.

This also calls for a more complete understanding of a person’s learning and professional story. Formal credentials remain important, but they rarely capture the full range of human skills, dispositions, and capacities developed through experience. Critical judgment, resilience, adaptability, care, and the ability to work with others may be essential to human flourishing without being easily represented in a transcript or credential. Lived experience is not automatically proof of competence, but we can broaden the evidence we consider. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of recognition is our capacity to see in others abilities and possibilities that they may not yet have had the opportunity to recognize in themselves. The importance of this work becomes particularly evident in a world marked by displacement, war, and genocide. People can lose their homes, institutions, records, and the conventional means of documenting their achievements without losing the knowledge and capabilities they carry. Recognition systems that rely exclusively on familiar institutional evidence risk compounding the exclusion experienced by those whose lives have been disrupted. More inclusive approaches cannot undo these injustices, but can help restore pathways for learning, participation, and mobility, along with dignity and agency.

Engaging meaningfully with decolonization also requires a willingness to unlearn and relearn. This applies to institutions as well as individuals. We need to reconsider assumptions about what counts as credible evidence, who has the standing to judge, and how different recognition systems can be accountable to one another without surrendering their autonomy. The objective is not to abandon standards or diminish the value of qualifications. It is to ensure that those standards remain responsive to the diversity of human knowledge and serve the development of human capabilities rather than unnecessarily constraining them.

As Simone stated, this is where GDN’s convening power becomes especially significant. Its ability to bring together decision makers, educators, recognition authorities, technologists, and representatives of different communities creates an opportunity to move beyond the exchange of information toward purposeful collective action. That requires more than technology and common standards, it requires genuine engagement with different ways of knowing and with the people and communities whose knowledge is at stake. Nor must collaboration imply agreement. Some of the most productive exchanges are precisely those that expose the limitations of our own assumptions while allowing us to work constructively toward shared purposes.

I came away from the conference with a renewed sense of both hope and unease. Hope, because the discussions demonstrated a willingness to confront difficult questions, acknowledge different traditions of knowledge, and imagine more inclusive ways of recognizing human capabilities. Unease, because the historical forces that perpetuate inequality remain powerful, and because technological change may be moving faster than our collective capacity to govern it responsibly. Yet I find grounds for optimism in the recognition that these are not challenges any single institution, community, or technological system can resolve alone. GDN has an opportunity to turn these discussions into practical, principled collaboration.

The conversations emerging from Cape Town reminded me that the recognition of knowledge is ultimately connected to the recognition of human dignity. Our systems of education, qualifications, and credentials matter, but they are instruments rather than ends in themselves. Their value should be judged by the extent to which they expand opportunity, enable people to develop and exercise their capabilities, and support human flourishing. This returns us to the emancipatory aspirations of lifelong learning – the possibility that every person, regardless of where or how they have learned, might have their knowledge considered seriously and their potential given room to develop.

Above all, we must continue working together. There is no assurance that technological progress will produce a more equitable future, but neither is there reason to surrender the possibility that it can contribute to one. What gives me hope is not technology in itself, but (as one of the participants shared) the willingness of people to question, to listen, to unlearn and relearn, and to take responsibility for the future they are helping to shape. The uncertainty remains, as does the promise. Our task is to ensure that the possibilities before us are directed toward the flourishing of human lives.

These are the days of miracle and wonder

and don’t cry, baby, don’t cry….