The Youth Advisory Board for the Ford Foundation funded Pan African leadership project will play a critical role in the governance of the project. The board has been intentionally constituted up front at the start of the grant project to provide strategic inputs and provide overall guidance of the project and its implementation.

Two ex officio members will sit on the board in addition to the eminent young Africans on the board. The first is a member of AFLI - which is the grant recipient.  The second is a member of the African Union Commission’s Youth Division.

In addition to the Board, the leadership project is assembling partners with which to work on an online platform to build a curated community of practice.  Various African youth initiatives will be set up for collaboration to be explored, and experiences and best practices documented and shared.  This will facilitate learningacross and between progammes. The curators will play a key role in steering these efforts and announcements will be made regarding this in coming weeks.  

The board for this project follows:

2016 Tutu Fellow Succès Masra, who until recently was the Principal Economist for the African Development Bank, has resigned his position to launch a political movement called The Transformers, with the aim of rebuilding his home country, Chad. 

The movement was launched on 29 April.  He has called on Chadians, both insiders and outsiders, to join him to create a new republic that is united, demanding of its leadership, and just.

South Africa's Public Enterprises Minister has appointed a new interim board to the country's state-owned defence company, Denel. On the new board is 2015 Tutu Fellow, Nonzukiso Siyotula.  No members of the previous board were retained. The cleanout of Denel’s board is the second major shake up at a state-owned enterprise in South Africa in recent months. The new President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said that cleaning up state-owned enterprises with a track record of mismanagement and ethical lapses was a priority of his to get the economy back on track. 

2012 Tutu Fellow Dr Amy Jadesimi has been named Africa's Young CEO of the Year.  Amy is the Managing Director and CEO of LADOL, short for a half billion USD port development infrastructure project at Lagos, Nigeria.  The acronym stands for Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base and is an industrial free zone with a logistics base in the shipyard.  Amy's plans go beyond just infrastructure development, however.  She is working towards transforming the area into more than just an industrial area, rather, she wants it to be an economic zone that sustainably creates jobs and business opportunities in the area.

In 2017, at the close of the Tutu Leadership Programme, the Class of 2017 felt inspired by the life-changing programme and decided they wanted to collect a group donation to further the work being done by the African Leadership Institute. They asked that the cash collected from the personal resources of the 2017 Fellows be used for the sustainability of the programme in future. Because of the impact the programme had had on them, they felt it was important that somebody who might have the potential to become a Fellow shouldn't lose that opportunity because of a lack of resources. So they asked for the money to be used towards covering the expenses of a deserving candidate who otherwise may not be able to participate due to financial constraints.

An agriculture education program started by the global agricultural equipment manufacturer AGCO in partnership with Strathmore University in Kenya, have enrolled their first students.  The program was initiated by two Fellows, AGCO's Nuradin Osman - a 2013 Fellow - and Martin Mbaya, a 2015 Fellow, who is a lecturer at the business school.  The agriculture program seeks to create capacity and skills in the African agriculture sector at a time when people are being asked to do more with less.

The African Leadership Institute has hired Bridgette Mdangayi to lead the Ford Foundation grant-funded leadership initiative.  AFLI was awarded the $800 000 grant in 2017. The grant is to network young leaders from across Africa in order to obtain critical mass for young leaders and enable them to have an impact on the direction of the continent.

Bridgette came on board on 1 March 2018.  She's an independent management consultant and experienced Project and Programme management professional with 10 years’ professional experience in both the NGO and Corporate Sectors.

In her TEDx Talk that was recorded at TEDGlobal 2017, 2008 Tutu Fellow Bibi Bakare-Yusuf says stories carry great significance in a culture. Bakare founded the indie press Cassava Republic because of her conviction of the importance of reading to culture.  Narratives in books give shape to the people they represent, and as a writer and publisher she believes it is important to be able to find voices like your own in your country’s literature. This quest to broaden Africa’s story archive is what motivated her to become a publisher.  Since then, she has obtained considerable success, picking up several awards and her disruptive approach has seen her sell books in cafe's, hair salons, and supermarkets.

View her unedited talk below.

2017 Tutu Fellow Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba has been named Vice Minister of Health and Social Welfare for the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. He leaves Marathon Oil, where he was leading a project to prevent malaria.  News of the change of responsibilities was made by the Corporate Social Responsibility Manager for Marathon Oil, Carl Maas. 

A third of the medicines available in parts of Africa are fake. People have as much as a 50% chance of getting the wrong drug. Patients can’t tell if they are getting the real thing and counterfeit drugs are manufactured in dangerous conditions. 2010 Tutu Fellow Bright Simons outlines in this TEDx talk in Hamburg and how the aim of his company is to use technology to determine the authenticity of medicines. Counterfeit medicines are a real issue in Africa, where near-perfect copies of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies can jeopardize the recovery of patients, or worse, lead to the deaths of people.

2012 Tutu Fellow Julie Gichuru discusses the development of African resources in her TEDx talk. She makes the case that Africa is blessed with rich natural resources and by harnessing them - rather than wasting them - Africa could be transformed.  The Sahara could be developed into a solar power generator for the continent. Careful use of agricultural resources has transformed Malawi.  She unpacks these ideas by pointing out a few areas in which potential exists for positive change.

Recorded in 2012, Gbenga Sesan begins his TEDx talk about his time at Obafemi Awolowo University. He arrived at the gate to the university and told the cab driver to let him out. The road that goes into the campus is quite long. Despite the cabbie’s protests, Sesan got out of the cab. It was then that he learned that he still had quite a way to go to walk to get to the dorm. His first lesson as a new student was that old knowledge and a new environment could lead to embarrassment - especially with four bags!  He learned more along the way that had little to do with his formal education.

The Ford Foundation has awarded a grant to the African Leadership Institute to help young African leaders across the continent reach critical mass in influencing the direction the continent is headed.  The $800,000 grant will be used to assist AFLI in networking young leaders across the continent as well as set up a community of practice so that solutions developed by young leaders can be shared and replicated. The grant was awarded and accepted by AFLI in the last quarter of 2017 for disbursement over a three-year period. 

The grant was written and submitted by AFLI CEO Jackie Chimhanzi, and in it, she says Africa's development challenges can be attributed to one major factor - a lack of effective leadership. 

Making a simple change can help realize one’s full potential. At TED Talent Search Lagos 2017 in Nigeria, Victoria Ohaeri describes the importance of changing her name to positively affect others' perceptions.  The 2016 Tutu Fellow tells her personal story about the effects of labeling, and how changing her name made all the difference.

Young farmers participating in a project started by 2017 Tutu Fellow Samuel Kariuki have had their first harvest and been paid for the fruits of their labour.  The new farmers in the agro-entrepreneurship Fort Hall Eye Project harvested two tons of beans. This green success is taking place in one of the most troubled counties in Kenya, where alcoholism has left almost no household unaffected.