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A colleague, with a long career in Tanzania’s public education system as a teacher and school inspector under his belt, visited a school in a rural district to check on whether the teachers were present at school and teaching in the classroom. When he walked into a Standard Two class, he found about 50 eight-year olds sitting there, unsupervised and untaught. They did not know where their teacher was. He went to investigate and the head teacher could not explain the teacher’s absence either.

A few minutes later, my colleague returned to the class, to find the children in fits of laughter. Their teacher, sporting shoeless, muddy feet and looking rather sheepish, had returned and was standing at the front of the classroom.

The CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and 2014 Tutu Fellow, Sello Hatang, will once again be leading an expedition to trek Mount Kilimanjaro.  Popularly known as the Trek4Mandela, the group is scheduled to summit Kilimanjaro on July 18, in commemoration of Nelson Mandela’s birthday.

The sponsored trek to the summit of Africa's best-known peak - which rises more than 19,000 feet above sea level - is to raise funds for a sanitary pad campaign to keep girls in school.

Tanzanian politician and 2013 Tutu Fellow, January Makamba - since his appointment as Minister of Environment and Union in President John Magufuli’s cabinet - has led initiatives and missions committed to protecting the environment. Some of the key areas he currently addresses focus on protection of forests, implementing solutions for aquatic wildlife, and addressing the prospective water crisis. His point of view regarding the environment is very much in keeping with the saying: we’ve not inherited this planet from our fathers, we’ve borrowed it from our children.

We are excited to announce a new Tutu Fellows’ column in African Business magazine, with the inaugural piece appearing in the July 2017 issue.   In the column, the Tutu Fellows, as thought-leaders and influencers across the continent, will give their perspectives on the evolving realities of the continent. Lanre Akinola, Editor of African Business magazine, said "The column is a dedicated space for the thoughts and ideas of a new generation of leaders that need to be heard. The Tutu Fellows are already reshaping the face of leadership on the continent, and we are delighted and honoured to be able to make this platform available."

One of the signs that a network is effective, is an active network. Testament to this is the recent open letter to African heads of state and social media campaign about South Sudan, which was started by Fellows over coffee. The campaign aims to pressure various parties to acknowledge the human right violations, displacement crisis, and chaos in South Sudan due to factionalism within the governance structures of that young country. While the initiative stems from collaborative efforts between various Fellows, it underscored the ability of the AFLI network to drive initiatives providing solutions for the continent.

The African Leadership Institute is pleased to announce the appointments of Ronnie Ntuli, Lorna Irungu-Macharia, and Swaady Martin to the AFLI South Africa board.  AFLI is grateful to Funmi Iyanda, Elsie Kanza, and James Mwangi for their valuable and constructive contributions during their tenures as Board members. 

Several Tutu Fellows were invited in their various capacities as part of an effort to showcase another face of Africa, that of African entrepreneurs.  The session they attended comes ahead of the leaders summit of the G20 on 7 July.   Many countries in Africa already have strong political and economic partnerships with the G20.  Input ahead of the July meeting was sought on new options for boosting sustainable economic growth, investment and stability in Africa. 

Tutu Fellow Sello Hatang has been honoured by the city of Buenos Aires in recognition for his work at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which he leads.  He was given an honorary diploma by the city, which is Argentina's largest, and declared a Guest of Honor.  The honor is not lightly bestowed and is the first to be awarded since 2015.

Climate change an humanitarian activist Catherine Constantinides was invited to address the Italian parliament as part of a conference on sustainability and the impact of climate change.  Constantinides, a 2013 Fellow, was invited by the Istituto Agronomico per l'Oltremare, a technical and scientific body of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

2015 Tutu Fellow Goriola Erogbogbo has been selected for the prestigious U.S. State Department's International Visitors Leadership Program.  The IVLP is the U.S. Department of State’s premiere professional exchange programme. Through short-term visits to the United States, the US seeks to engage current and emerging foreign leaders from a variety of fields and thereby cultivate lasting relationships between these leaders and their American counterparts.

Two 2016 Tutu Fellows, Amanda Gicharu and Jon Kornik, have been selected for the final one thousand candidates for UNLEASH 2017. Each year, UNLEASH sets up global innovation labs in which they bring together this group and get them working on themes such as water, food, energy, sustainable consumption and production and others. The large number offers UNLEASH the ability to tap some of the best minds of a generation and obtain critical mass on social issues. 

2016 Tutu Fellow Jon Kornik has joined the ranks of the 2017 Echoing Green Fellowship.  Thirty six people were named by the global organisation as Fellows in the class of 2017.  They include people turning chicken feathers into sustainable home insulation; creating pathways for underground distributors of cannabis to enter the legal cannabis industry; and equipping communities with data on police violence.

Across the world, 1 June marks International Children’s Day. The September 20 Foundation, which was started by 2017 Fellow Abayomi Awobokun, celebrated the day with 450 displaced children at the Kuchigoro Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Abuja, Nigeria. Children were given food and party packs.  An inflatable climbing wall gave the children a challenge they'd not had before and along with toys that were provided, a day of fun was had by all. Many of the people living in these camps have been displaced by the conflict with Boko Haram.  Several million people across Nigeria are living in IDP camps with inadequate food and in poor living conditions that impact the children the most.

An experimental Ebola vaccine may be used in the outbreak in the remote northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.  2017 Tutu Fellow Yap Boum is an epidemiologist with Epicentre Africa, the organization that has helped to set up a vaccine trial protocol with the Congolese government. Trial protocols are required for approval for use of an experimental drug. If granted, the vaccine could be used within weeks. 

2015 Tutu Fellow Landry Signé has published a new book titled Innovating Development Strategies in Africa.  It looks at international, regional and national drivers that play a role in African policy and economic transformation and the shift from state-led strategies to regional economic integration.  Signe reviews and analyses postcolonial strategies for economic development and provides an explanation of policy innovations since the 1960s.  A focus is Francophone Africa, where he provides detailed case studies.