Bulelani Jili is a nonresident fellow with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council Tech Programs, and a PhD candidate at Harvard University as an Oppenheimer graduate fellow.

His research interests include Africa-China relations, Chinese geopolitical expansion, cybersecurity, information and communications technology development, internet policy, and privacy law. He is also a cybersecurity fellow at the Belfer Center; a research associate with the China, Law and Development project at Oxford University; a visiting fellow at Yale Law School; and formerly a futures fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. His research brief discerns the exportation of Chinese surveillance technology in Africa.

His writing has appeared in publications and with think tanks such as African Affairs; Theory, Culture & Society; the Mail & Guardian; Africa Is a Country; the Elephant, and the African Center for Security Studies.  Prior to attending Harvard, he earned a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University, where he studied as a Standard Bank Africa chairman’s scholar. In 2016, he was awarded a Yenching Scholarship to study at the Yenching Academy of Peking University. He holds a BA with honors in philosophy, politics, and economics (known as the College of Social Studies) from Wesleyan University, where he was a Pfeiffer scholar.