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CNN’s Inside Africa have profiled 2017 Tutu Fellow, Bosun Tijani, along with two other of Nigeria's tech entrepreneurs and innovators who are using technology to provide life-changing solutions to everyday problems.  Bosun is the founder and CEO of CcHUB. 

CNN says Nigeria has 90 tech hubs, the most on the continent. It said that in 2019, one report had found that start-ups in Nigeria had raised nearly $400 million, more than double the amount from the previous year. CNN went on to say that in recent years, Nigeria had become an incubator for some of the continent’s biggest start-ups.

A 2006 Tutu Fellow, Wendy Burgers, is leading research into reinfection of patients by COVID-19.  She had noticed that globally, a handful of patients had reportedly been reinfected with COVID. She thought it was important to discover and understand how the immune system responds to the virus and whether it provides previously infected patients with a level of protection, should they be re-exposed to the virus.

Wendy is a viral immunologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Virology in the Department of Pathology in University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Faculty of Health Sciences. Wendy and her team partnered with a healthcare worker study in UCT’s Department of Medicine, which involves regular sampling of a group of healthcare workers who have a high risk of exposure to the virus but who had already been infected with COVID-19. It also used a group of their peers who had not.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science magazine has profiled 2019 Tutu Fellow, Prof Edwine Barasa, and his role in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya. He is the director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, a long-standing collaboration between Kenya and the United Kingdom, in Nairobi, Kenya, as well as being a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Oxford.

Over the course of the pandemic, Edwine has worked with epidemiologists and advised Kenya’s Ministry of Health on how to allocate its limited resources. The KEMRI-Wellcome Trust has been helping the Kenyan government with testing and viral sequencing, and hosted a Kenyan trial of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.

2019 Tutu Fellow Samson Itodo was appointed by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), for a three-year tenure beginning in 2021. International IDEA is an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable democracy worldwide. The board of advisers of IDEA play the major role of advising the council of member states and the secretariat on matters of strategic importance.

Samson is the Executive Director of YIAGA Africa, a community of change-makers focused on building sustainable democracies in Africa. YIAGA promotes the principles of inclusion, justice, accountability and constitutionalism, which successfully lead the #NotTooYoungToRun movement.

2014 Tutu Fellow Mireille Tushiminina has been appointed the Global Coordinator for the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme to Eliminate FGM is the largest global programme to accelerate the end of FGM and advance the rights, health and well-being of women and girls.

Despite being internationally recognized as a human rights violation, some 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, and if current rates persist, an estimated 68 million more will be cut by 2030. Female genital mutilation refers to any procedure involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genitals for non-medical reasons.

2013 Tutu Fellow Tomiwa Aladekomo has been been appointed as the Acting National Chair of the Youth Party, a registered political party in Nigeria, in preparation for the 2023 general elections. This appointment was announced by Party Chairman Seun Sule and the Board of Trustees in a statement in late October 2020. Tomiwa's appointment is expected to be ratified at the party’s convention in March 2021.

The Youth Party recently regained the right to compete in all elections moving forward till 2023, following a Federal High Court ruling.

Professor Jumoke Oduwole, a 2013 Tutu Fellow, and Ada Osakwe, a 2014 Tutu Fellow, are among 20 contributors to the UNDP in Africa’s The Futures Report: Making the AfCFTA Work for Women and Youth.

AfCFTA - or, the Agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area  is a legal instrument – among the African Union Member States to create a single market. This report argues that the AfCFTA represents much more: “on the one hand, it is a significant milestone on the journey to African integration and development. On the other hand, it is a catalyst for new ways of doing business, producing, working and trading within Africa and with the rest of the world.”

2012 Tutu Fellow Swaady Martin has launched an independent publishing house and online store called Loving Kindness Boma. It provides resources to help cultivate a culture of love, kindness, compassion, understanding, mindfulness, introspection and self-love within the family. Loving Kindness Boma provides a selection of beautifully illustrated stories with diverse main characters created to foster conscious values, social-emotional wellbeing and mindfulness in children.

Swaady explains on the site that the choice of the name borrows from the African tradition of a Boma being a place for storytelling and a coming together of people.

A 2009 Tutu Fellow, Dr Julie Makani, has been awarded the Dr Lee Jong-wook Memorial Prize for Public Health. The award, which was made in November 2020, is awarded annually to a person, institution, a governmental or nongovernmental organization that has made an outstanding contribution to public health. It was presented at a special ceremony during the World Health Organisation Assembly.

Julie was awarded the prestigious prize at the WHO event due to her leading work at the Sickle Cell Disease Consortium in Tanzania, which provides an academic and scientific environment that serves as a platform for the professional development of clinicians and scientists working to combat sickle cell disease.

2007 Tutu Fellow Brilliant Mhlanga has written an intimate and moving tribute for the late former Ghanaian President and military officer, Jerry John Rawlings. JJ Rawlings - as he was commonly known - led the country from 1981 to 2001, a period that included a military junta until 1992. He went on to serve two terms as the democratically-elected president of Ghana, stepping down at the end of the constitutionally-limited time frame.

Brilliant describes Jerry Rawlings as a “true Pan African” and a “Giant of Africa”, giving us an intimate look into this man's personality, political views, and dreams for the African continent.

Forbes Africa Magazine has profiled 2013 Fellow Danladi Veheijen and Eric Idiahi who was selected for the Tutu Fellowship Class of 2020 in their cover story of the October/ November 2020 Special Edition on Private Equity in Africa.  Danladi and Eric are co-founders of Verod Capital Management Limited. They founded the company at the apex of the global financial crisis in 2008, and it was one of the first indigenous venture capitalist firms in Nigeria.

Verod is a $300 million Africa-focused private equity firm which invests in high growth, medium sized companies across several sectors, including consumer products, manufacturing, technology/media and real estate.

The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) has announced the appointment of 2012 Tutu Fellow Lydie Hakizimana as its Chief Executive Officer. The AIMS International Governing Board (IGB) made the announcement on the 4th of November 2020, following a unanimous decision.

Founded in 2003, AIMS is a pan-African network of centres of excellence for post-graduate training in mathematical sciences, research and public engagement in STEM. With centres in South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon and Rwanda, AIMS is leading Africa’s socio-economic transformation through innovative scientific training, cutting-edge research, and public engagement.

2019 Tutu Fellow Edwine Barasa PhD has been appointed visiting Professor of Health Economics at the University of Oxford. In this role, he will be responsible for Health Economics research, student supervision, and teaching at the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford.

Edwine is already a professor, and the Director of the Nairobi Programme of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and also heads the Programme’s Health Economics Research Unit. He has a PhD in Health Economics (University of Cape Town), a Master’s degree in Health Economics (University of Cape Town), and a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy (University of Nairobi).

2014 Tutu Fellow Linda Kasonde has been at the forefront of a legal battle since 2019 to prevent a change to the constitution by the Zambian government. Zambia’s Constitution Amendment Bill (No. 10 of 2019) aimed at weakening the legislature, judiciary, and state institutions that provide necessary checks and balances. “Bill 10”, as it was known, also threatened to change the electoral system to make it easier for the incumbent to win the 2021 presidential election and to hold on to power through gerrymandering. In a victory for the people, the bill has been defeated in the legislature.

Chapter One Foundation - which she founded - and the Law Association of Zambia, sued the state on the basis that the proposed Constitutional Amendment Bill was unconstitutional when it was first proposed.

Financing Alliance for Health - the company 2019 Fellow Dr Angela Gichaga leads - has developed a seven part series of courses on financing in public health. Financing Alliance serves government Ministries of Health and Ministries of Finance, globally, in building resilient and sustainably-financed health systems. At a time when the global coronavirus pandemic is affecting people everywhere, financing stretched public health systems is a hot topic, so the timing of the programme is fortuitous.

The newly-developed Financing Community Health Programs for Scale and Sustainability course presents an in-depth exploration of the financing value chain needed to understand resource needs as well as to mobilize resources for community health.