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The Tutu Fellows relish the time to connect with one another beyond the obvious connections through sector-related and work orientated opportunities and collaborations. While these are powerful ways for the network to deepen our impact across the continent and sharpen our understanding and nuances of each country, it is the building of relationships that glue the Fellows together.

Friday 29th June was a powerful and much-needed time for Fellows to connect, reflect and communicate about our experiences during the Covid 19 pandemic. It was led by 2006 Tutu Fellow Judy Malan, who facilitated a session to enable us to reflect on how we have responded to lockdown, both personally and as a leader. She touched on the different emotions we might have been processing, those of fear, hope and optimism as well as natural patterns we might default too - pessimist, optimist or realist.

2006 Tutu Fellow Kunyalala Maphisa has been appointed to the Council of the University of Cape Town. The appointment, which was made by the Minister of Education, Bonginkosi (Blade) Nzimande, was made on 19 June 2020.  UCT Council members typically serve for four years.  Under the law governing the university, the Minister is entitled to appoint up to five people to the Council and the council's members recently began their 2020-2024 stint. 

The Council governs the university and its responsibilities include determining the mission, objectives, goals, strategies and policies for the progress of the institution. Kunyalala is a UCT alumnus, obtaining both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the university.

2014 Tutu Fellow Ada Osakwe delivered the convocation address to the Kellogg School of Management Class of 2020. She became the first African to be given this honour, and the fourth black woman. She followed in the footsteps of outstanding Black Americans Edith Cooper, the Global Head of Human Capital at Goldman Sachs in 2017; Roslyn Brock, the Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP in 2012; and media titan Oprah Winfrey, in 2011.

Ada is an award-winning food entrepreneur and Founder of The Nuli Juice Company and an alumnus of the Kellogg School.

2006 Tutu Fellow Aidan Eyakuze has published a LinkedIn article about serious concerns around Tanzania’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Aidan writes that Tanzanians have been allowed to continue moving around and trading freely, with only minimal requirements being observed like being required to wear a mask in public. Thus while it appears the country has adopted the controversial 'herd immunity' approach to the pandemic, it is doing so in data darkness.

Aidan is an economist, scenario practitioner and is a board member on the Global Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership.

2014 Tutu Fellow Sello Hatang is raising questions about the worrying intersection of the political economy in a time of COVID-19 with the continuing issue of racism and white supremacy.  He questions what will be necessary for South Africa to do to see this moment as an opportunity to fundamentally restructure.  In a Daily Maverick Op-Ed published in June 2020, Sello, who is CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, reflects on the global Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement as well as numerous incidents of police brutality in South Africa during the lockdown. 

He says that he has felt keenly the extent to which 'black lives don't matter' and he poses the question of when the country will start prioritising its most vulnerable?

Five Tutu Fellows are named in the annually released Top 50 Disruptors by The Africa Report.  The report names the top 50 firebrands making waves on the continent, who are 'shaking up the status quo, asking uncomfortable questions, upending business models and fighting preconceptions' and who are 'transforming the African continent. The Fellows are Mitchell Elegbe, Oluseun Onigbinde, Bibi Bakare, Edwin Macharia and Ahmed Zahran. Of the exclusive list, 10% are Tutu Fellows. 

The publication ranks these exclusive 50 individuals based on three factors: innovation, disruption and heft.   According to The Africa Report, these criteria take into account how new the idea is, how big the change is and how many people are impacted.

Re'ayit Misr emergency ICU field hospital has been set up by Tutu Fellow Ahmed Zahran’s company, KarmSolar, to aid Egypt’s COVID-19 response. He pulled together a coalition of experts from KarmSolar and it's partners and designed a functional, modular solution for an emergency ICU field hospital. The Re'ayit Misr emergency ICU field hospital is a product of the coalition’s combined expertise in energy, architecture design and construction.

Their expertise was used to develop a modular, pre-fabricated structure, to properly serve the needs of healthcare institutions and patients combating the pandemic, by providing additional ICU capacity.

Adebola Williams, 2018 Tutu Fellow and Media Entrepreneur, Journalist, Political Activist and co-founder and Group CEO of Red, has launched the Beating Corona website. This comprehensive and accessible website details information on what organizations, brands, groups, corporations, and individuals are doing to assist in the fight against Covid-19 in Nigeria.

Through the website you can access information according to region, resources and organisations and centres distributing resources as well as up to date information on interventions and donations nationwide.

2018 Tutu Fellow Mohammed El Dahshan, has written an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the Egyptian economy, sector by sector, that has been published in the latest  issue of The Africa Report. Mohammed is also an Associate Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, where he focuses on economic development, regional cooperation, and fragile states. In his analytical piece, he also provides recommendations to the state on balancing the short- and long-term response to the economic impact of the pandemic.

He makes the point that the ravages caused by the coronavirus have equalised the playing field across the globe and that as states learn to live with this new reality, they must also create policies to minimise the economic impact the crisis brings.

A group of Ghanaian Tutu Fellows banded together to collect and donate personal protective equipment (PPEs) to healthcare workers in Ghana in May 2020 to help them stay safe as they treat patients who may have COVID-19.  The group comprised 2019 Tutu Fellow Marcia Ashong; 2014 Tutu Fellow Isaac Fokuo; and 2015 Tutu Fellow Mawuli Dake.  Prior to this, nurses had been forced to work without protection.

The donations were made to the frontline workers at one of Ghana's premier hospitals, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. The donation included 200 N95 face masks, 100 medical-grade gowns, and 200 gloves.

The Nwunelis - a power Tutu Leadership Programme couple - made history by becoming the first couple to deliver the keynote address to Harvard Business School graduates.  The two, Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli and Mezuo Nwuneli, delivered the address to the 2020 graduating class in May this year via a videolink as a result of COVID-19. Ndidi attended the Class of 2006, and Mezuo became a Tutu Fellow the following year. Both are also Harvard Business School graduates, which is where they met.  They join a storied list of keynote speakers - last year's was delivered by Michael Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg LP and former Mayor of New York.

In their speech to the 2020 graduates, they recognised the unprecedented challenges that the graduates were facing in the midst of a global pandemic and the health, social and economic impact it would have. 

A piece by 2016 Tutu Fellow Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri titled COVID-19 and the shrinking civic space in Nigeria has been published in Just Security. Victoria is the founder and director of research and policy at Spaces for Change, a non-profit organization based in Nigeria that conducts research and advocacy that includes a focus on defending the civic space.

Victoria's piece examines how the coronavirus pandemic is being used as a cover to shrink civic in the name of 'national security'.  With people's attention on public health, what is being missed is the more worrying concern that state actors are exploiting the pandemic to stifle dissent, clamp down on civic freedoms, and push through restrictive measures, using COVID-19 as a pretext.

2013 Tutu Fellow Catherine Constantinides asks deeper questions about everyday active citizenry and what it looks like at the level of the individual and the community in a South African context. She gave her TEDx Talk, which she called Active Citizenship 101, at TEDx Waterfall Drive in May 2020.  Informed by her vast experience as a social activist on the African continent, as an international climate activist, and human rights defender, she challenges ideas about active citizenry and what it means to be agents of change. She begins her talk by saying the biggest mistake one can make is to do nothing because one can do only a little.

The talk was at a TEDx event and used the TED conference format but was independently organized by the local community.

Olugbenga Adesida, an AFLI Director and Trustee, and a 2018 Tutu Fellow, Geci Karuri-Sebina, have written a powerful post in which they call for using COVID-19 as a global opportunity to shift the global economic paradigm. The times are urgent, they say, and the needs globally mutual. The article was published in The Daily Maverick in May 2020. 

COVID-19 is a rude awakening for the world, and they write it has laid bare for the world to see the underlying problems of the current paradigm. "It highlights the unsustainability of the current systems and the need for change – from the US with the biggest economy, to the smallest most fragile economies in Africa.”

2008 Tutu Fellow Eunice Ajambo provided a briefing overview on the main points for Namibia and Southern Africa from the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) mid-2020 Report. The UN report covers the impact of the global pandemic and subsequent global economic contraction.  Eunice is the Economist and Development Coordination officer for the United Nation in Namibia.

The UN is projecting an economic contraction of 3.2 per cent this year and says it is likely to be the worst recession since the Great Depression due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the scale and global nature of the economic impact, it presents unique challenges given how much the global economy has changed since the 1930s.