← Layer 3 Cohorts · Specialist Credential
🏗️ AI Governance Cohort
Make your organisation's AI defensible — governed, audited, accountable.
Certified AI Governance Practitioner™
A guided six-week intensive for the people who carry the risk when AI goes wrong. You will leave with a complete AI governance framework built for your organisation — risk register, approval and escalation workflows, board reporting and audit protocols — and the standing to take it to your audit committee.
For: Compliance officers · Risk managers · Internal auditors · Board advisors · Legal counsel
The problem we're fixing. Boards are asking "are we covered on AI?" and nobody can answer with evidence. There's no risk register, no approval gate, no audit trail — just tools spreading through the organisation faster than anyone can govern them. "We have an AI policy" is not governance. This cohort gives you the operating machinery that makes the policy real, auditable and defensible.
What you'll walk away with
You build one piece of a real governance framework every week. By the capstone you have the whole apparatus — ready to present to an audit committee, not a folder of theory.
A complete AI governance framework for your organisation — mandate, risk appetite, controls and assurance.
An AI risk register + control matrix you can operate and audit against.
Approval, escalation & incident-response workflows for AI deployments and failures.
A board reporting pack — how to report AI risk to a board or audit committee with credibility.
Command of the frameworks — ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF, King IV and Companies Act duties, mapped to SA reality.
The Certified AI Governance Practitioner™ credential — assessed by a domain expert against a published rubric.
Built on the Funda Five™
Good governance answers the same five questions our learners ask of every AI decision — enforced at organisational scale, with evidence.
1 · Task
Governance mandate and scope — which AI decisions are in scope, and the organisation's risk appetite for each.
2 · Data
POPIA checkpoints, data controls and procurement gates baked into the governance framework.
3 · Tool
Model and vendor onboarding gates, approval workflows, and the controls that sit around every tool.
4 · Trust
The risk register, monitoring, KPIs, audit protocols and continuous assurance that prove it's working.
5 · Human
Board oversight, three lines of defence, accountability lines and incident escalation.
The six weeks
Each week: a focus, the Funda Five™ lens it sharpens, a live faculty session, and one concrete thing you build toward your own framework.
Week 1Foundations & the governance frameworks
Focus
Why AI governance is not IT governance. ISO/IEC 42001 AI Management System requirements, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, King IV on technology & information governance, and Companies Act director duties for AI decisions. Comparative analysis for SA organisations.
Funda Five™
Task — defining your governance mandate and scope.
Live session
Faculty walk-through of the frameworks + mapping them to your organisation.
You build
Governance Mandate & Scope — what your framework governs, who owns it, and your AI risk appetite.
Week 2Risk registers & controls
Focus
Building an AI risk register, risk classification, control design, and POPIA compliance checkpoints in AI procurement. Turning vague "AI risk" into a tracked, owned, mitigated set of entries.
Funda Five™
Data & Trust — the controls that protect the organisation.
Live session
Hands-on risk-register workshop on your own AI use cases.
You build
AI Risk Register + Control Matrix for your organisation.
Week 3Approval, escalation & incident response
Focus
Designing approval and escalation workflows, model/vendor onboarding gates, and incident-response protocols for AI failures. What happens before an AI tool is deployed, and what happens when it goes wrong.
Funda Five™
Tool — the gates and controls around every deployment.
Live session
Workflow-design clinic + tabletop incident simulation.
You build
Approval & Incident-Response Workflows for AI in your organisation.
Week 4Board-level oversight & assurance
Focus
Reporting AI risk to boards and audit committees, non-executive director responsibilities, audit protocols for AI systems, and connecting AI governance to existing enterprise risk management (ERM) structures.
Funda Five™
Human — accountability and oversight at the top of the house.
Live session
Board-reporting clinic — present AI risk the way a board needs to hear it.
You build
Board Reporting Pack + Audit Protocol for AI risk.
Week 5Embedding & continuous assurance
Focus
The operating model: three lines of defence, training and awareness, monitoring and KPIs, continuous assurance, and an AI governance maturity model. How the framework lives and improves rather than gathering dust.
Funda Five™
Trust — proving, over time, that governance works.
Live session
Operating-model & maturity workshop.
You build
Implementation & Assurance Plan — how the framework operates and matures.
Week 6 — CapstoneDesign, review & defend the framework
Focus
Peer review and domain-expert assessment of your complete framework. You revise, then present and defend the design decisions to a panel — the test is whether it would survive an audit committee, not whether you produced a document.
Assessment
A complete AI governance framework for a real organisational context (risk register template, board reporting structure, incident escalation protocol), assessed by a domain expert against a published rubric. One revision opportunity.
You earn
Certified AI Governance Practitioner™ — demonstrated, not completed.
The toolkit you keep
AI Risk Register templateClassify, own and track AI risk with controls.
Approval & Escalation Workflow kitDeployment gates and incident-response playbook.
Board Reporting PackA reusable AI-risk report for board / audit committee.
AI Governance Maturity ModelBenchmark and improve your governance over time.
Why this is unlike anything else in SA
Our difference
You leave with a board-ready governance framework — not a certificate that says you attended.
No other South African programme takes a compliance or risk professional from frameworks to a finished, auditable AI governance apparatus for their own organisation, assessed by a domain expert and built on a shared judgment framework (the Funda Five™). It is the difference between knowing what ISO 42001 says and being able to operate it on Monday.
Format, prerequisites & cost
6-week guided intensive · one 90-minute live faculty session each week · weekly build-deliverables · live clinics & a tabletop simulation · max 20 learners · assessed by a domain-expert (not a facilitator) · capstone in Week 6 with one revision opportunity.
R39,995 / participant
Premium specialist credential · founding-cohort rate. Team and enterprise rates available. SETA/SDL eligibility subject to accreditation.
Prerequisite: Layer 1 Core Certification (AI Judgment Competency Certificate™), or demonstrated equivalent competency assessed on application.
Founding cohort · registering interest now
Govern your AI properly.
Register your interest to secure a founding place and be first to know when the next cohort opens. Runs separately from the Core Certification.
Talk to us about a team cohort