News
The latest news from the African Leadership Institute and its Fellows. AFLI Fellows are leaders and change-makers, so this section has a lot of news. All text in all of the posts is fully searchable.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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The Board of the African Leadership Institute has appointed 2006 Tutu Fellow Kunyalala Maphisa as the CEO of AFLI. Kunyalala was part of the inaugural AFLI cohort of the Tutu Fellowship Programme and joined the African Leadership Institute's board earlier this year.
Kunyalala is a commercial attorney turned entrepreneur and businesswoman, with more than 20 years corporate experience, business and transaction advisory and development work. Her legal experience includes corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and transaction advisory and she has worked in multiple African countries. She previously practiced as an attorney in one of the largest commercial law firms in South Africa, later serving in various senior executive positions including at Ernst & Young South Africa where she was Head of Emerging Markets in the Corporate Finance Unit. She founded a Johannesburg based investment and advisory firm in 2018, recently relocating to and investing in Zimbabwe where she currently lives.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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2025 Tutu Fellow Diaraye Diallo writes in her essay for the Tutu Leadership Fellowship, that Africa’s greatest challenge is not a lack of resources, leadership, or global support. It is a lack of shared ownership of its future.
She contends that the continent must urgently transition from a culture of expectation to one of responsibility, where every citizen, not just political leaders, embrace their role in shaping national outcomes. At the center of this transformation lies education. More than a tool for development, education is a mechanism of empowerment: it equips individuals to understand their rights, engage in civic processes, and hold systems accountable.
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2025 Tutu Fellow Christopher Pappas reflects on how diversity and ethnicity shape leadership in Africa in his essay for the Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme. In it, he draws on lessons from his experience as Mayor of uMngeni Municipality.
He argues that leading a diverse community means building trust, listening genuinely, respecting cultures, and delivering services fairly. He says that in his role, he faces “wicked problems” that require inclusive, adaptive solutions. Leadership for him is about personal accountability, resisting identity politics, fighting corruption, and ensuring decisions have real impact. By designing fair institutions, governing transparently, and telling a story that unites people, he has sought to turn diversity into a strength.
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2025 Tutu Fellow Alex Tsado wrote this essay during his 2025 Leadership Programme participation. In it, he argues that, for an evolution of African leadership to address deeply-entrenched systemic challenges, to occur, leadership must cultivate a strategic awareness to counter external interventions that aim to maintain the continent's role as a raw resource exporter.
For the last two centuries, the role of the African continent has been narrowly defined within a global system that desperately wants it to remain unchanged. Systemic and deeply entrenched steps were taken to ensure Africa's primary function was to export human and mineral resources in their rawest forms, while simultaneously serving as a market for finished goods and services produced elsewhere.
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2025 Tutu Fellow Fiona Wanjiku Moejes argues that in a world gripped by climate crises, political unrest, and social fragmentation, care is often mistaken for softness - but in truth, it is one of the hardest and most revolutionary forces available. She makes this case in her essay requirement for the 2025 Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme.
She says that far from passive sentiment, care is a multidimensional, time-travelling practice: it reaches back to honour ancestral wisdom, attends to the present with courage and imagination, and stretches forward to safeguard generations yet to come.
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- Written by: Niven Postma
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The second workshop of the 2025 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship was held in Oxford and London from the 31st of August to the 7th of September, in partnership with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Saïd Business School. Just as with the Mont Fleur session, it was an intense and intensive experience of personal and professional growth and insights. Fortunately also interspersed with some free time to take walks to, and through, Oxford and to soak up all the beauty and history that it offers.
With the contributions of inspirational leaders, subject matter experts and facilitators, including Arunma Oteh, Stefan Dercon, Doyin Atewologun, Cynthia Rayner, Athol Williams, Peter Hanke, Marya Besharov, Moky Makura, Chris Higgins, and Tali Stein, this year’s cohort explored the paradoxes, tensions, possibilities and dilemmas of their leadership.
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Nominations close for the 2026 cohort of the African Leadership Institute's Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme at midnight South Africa time on 21 September 2025.
The process for the 2026 cohort did change compared to recent years. This year, AFLI limited the public announcement of the nominations and the open period for nominations is short. For individuals seeking nomination, the location to do so is at AFLI's dedicated site for the nomination, application and selection of candidates, TutuFellows.Africa.
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2018 Tutu Fellow Nozipho Tshabalala is launching her book, After the Fires - Unlocking the Power of Letting Go. The book, which is published by Johathan Ball, was launched in Cape Town in mid September 2025.
Nozipho is a communications professional, perhaps best known for her role as a moderator of high-level panels for global and African institutions and in leading conversations of change at corporations and civil society organisations. She is in demand for her unique and insightful ability to facilitate difficult conversations with courage, depth, and breadth.
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2008 Tutu Fellow Girma Amente PhD has been appointed as the African Union's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation. The AU's Permanent Mission in Geneva represents the continental body in multilateral negotiations and policy discussions on trade, development, and global governance.
Girma’s appointment was made in August 2025 by AU Chair Mahamoud Ali Yousouf. Previously, Girma had served as the Minister of Agriculture in Ethiopia for several years.
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2023 Tutu Fellow Melvyn Lubega has been appointed by the South African Presidency to lead the country’s Digital Services Unit (DSU). This new capability within the presidency is to implement South Africa's National Digital Transformation Roadmap. Approved by the Cabinet earlier this year, the Presidency announced South Africa's National Digital Transformation Roadmap on 12 May 2025.
In the Presidency's statement, it said that the South African tech entrepreneur is a globally-recognised technology pioneer, who co-founded Go1 - a platform used by businesses, non-profit organisations, and governments in more than 60 countries. Melvyn "has advised governments in Africa, Asia, and Europe on digital transformation programmes".
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- Written by: Jolomi Akperi
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During the June 2025 Mo Ibrahim Governance Weekend in Marrakech, the African Leadership Institute hosted a highly-engaging side-meeting titled Africa Jobs Scenarios: Reimagining Work for Africa’s Next Generation. This was part of AFLI's broader Engagement and Convening Series, and marked a key moment in ongoing efforts to address one of Africa’s most pressing challenges: creating dignified and fulfilling jobs for its growing youth population.
The session was built around the Africa Jobs Scenarios report, an exercise undertaken by the 2024 Tutu Fellows in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation with the aim to explore how the continent could create more than 30 million dignified and fulfilling jobs by 2040.
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Africa stands at a pivotal moment. With a burgeoning youth population and abundant resources, the continent possesses the potential to become a global economic powerhouse. Yet, this promise hinges on the continent’s ability to create meaningful opportunities for millions of Africans seeking dignified and fulfilling work. Dignified and fulfilling work is defined as productive employment that provides individuals with reliable income, a sense of purpose, and respect in the workplace. This report, Africa Jobs Scenarios, is a critical exploration of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in this crucial endeavor. (The report is available for download below.)
The Tutu Fellows Class of 2024 was tasked - through a partnership between the African Leadership Institute and the Mastercard Foundation - to deploy strategic foresight, as a planning tool, to chart plausible pathways for Africa’s job market by 2040. Scenarios in strategic foresight are structured narratives that explore multiple plausible futures to help organizations or countries manage uncertainty as well as to make informed decisions today.
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- Written by: Niven Postma
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The first workshop of the 2025 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship was held at Mont Fleur in Stellenbosch from the 3rd to the 11th of May 2025. The 24 Fellowship candidates were drawn from Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Guinea, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana and the DRC, and were chosen from over 900 nominations, all of which were intensely scrutinised and evaluated by a series of panels comprising AFLI colleagues and previous Tutu Fellows.
It was, as always, a very intense week of personal and professional learning, connection, and introspection.
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- Written by: Linda Kasonde
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Zambia transitioned from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy in 1991. This transition entailed a change in Zambia’s constitution to reflect the ideals of a plural democracy in which rights and freedoms were entrenched and in which an attempt to the remove the cult of the all-powerful political leader was made.
Zambia now stands on the cusp of yet another constitutional review process, the sixth of its kind since the country gained independence in 1964. The Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 7 of 2025 - like its predecessor, the Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 10 of 2019 - threatens to take the country down the dark path of constitutionally entrenched dictatorship. Constitutionalism seeks to limit government power by the constitution. I would argue that the reason why constitutionalism has largely failed in the country is due not only to failed constitution-making processes, but also due to a lack of temerity by the judiciary. This has forced the people of Zambia to save themselves time and time again.
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Statement by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellows on the Arrest and Detention of Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire and dated 22nd May 2025
The Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellows (“Tutu Fellows”) represent civic, political, and business leaders from all across the African continent concerned with the governance and development of the African Continent. We strongly condemn the recent arrest and detention of Kenyan Activist and 2020 Tutu Fellow Boniface Mwangi and his colleague Agather Atuhaire by the Tanzanian authorities for expressing solidarity with imprisoned Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who is facing charges of treason.
As a Pan-African institution, we further condemn statements by President Samia Suluhu that Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire had no right to offer solidarity to a Tanzanian colleague.
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- The 2025 Tutu Leadership Programme Cohort
- AFLI is Seeking Applications for CEO
- Landry Signé Publishes ‘Turning Policy into Action in Africa’ with Brookings Institution
- Mimi Kalinda appointed to the Board of the African Capacity Building Foundation
- Ronald Osumba authors report on 'Africa First' approach to US administration
- Sangu Delle to Chair Ashesi University's Board of Directors
- Lerato Mataboge Appointed as AU Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy
- Modupeola Fadugba Wins 2025 Norval Sovereign African Art Prize
- Tributes for Paul Kapelus, 2008 Tutu Fellow
- President Kgame appoints Jean-Guy Afrika CEO of Rwanda Development Board
