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2019 Tutu Fellow Sangu Delle delivered the keynote speech at the 65th Annual Employee Benefits Conference in San Diego in October 2019 and his topic was one that is often responded to with discomfort - that of mental health. The conference is the largest gathering of multiemployer and public employee benefit plan representatives, with nearly 5,000 people attending. In prepared remarks, the President of the Foundation, Gene Price, set the tone for Sangu's speech in which he himself shared a personal story that had deeply affected him and he implored all attendees to drop the social pretense and find solutions to help those struggling with mental health issues. Sangu picked up where Gene left off, sharing his own struggles with depression. He recounted how, when stress got to be too much for him, he had to confront his own deep prejudice: that men shouldn't take care of their mental health.

Award-winning journalist John-Allen Namu's production company has released a new documentary series, Bitter Harvest. The 2017 Tutu Fellow examines the growing negative impact of pesticides on food being grown in Kenya.

Released on World Food Day, the series notes that importation of agrochemicals increased by 144% over the course of the past four years into Kenya.  Many of these are pesticides and herbicides linked to cancer and being used by small-scale farmers. Additionally, protective gear is frequently not used and workers are dying from exposure to these products.

The series is broken into three chapters.

2007 Tutu Fellow Mezuo Nwuneli's Sahel Capital team has won the Impact Investment Award given by the Impact Investors Foundation at the Blending Finance for Social Investment Conference in Nigeria. The foundation says that the award honors and recognises a leading social enterprise and an investor within the Nigerian impact investing space who have made significant impact by providing solutions through their innovations, products, services or investments.

The award recognises entities who are able to set high standards through their business activities and investment decisions which further underscores the possibility of “doing good while doing well.”

2017 Tutu Fellow Jude Abaga - known more famously in the music world as M.I Abaga, the Nigerian hip hop star - became the first African artist with five albums in Apple Music's Top 100 Album Charts.  In his Twitter feed, he thanked his fans for helping all his albums reach that pinnacle. Doubtless the smack talk amongst rappers is going to be fierce, but it is an accolade that speaks for itself.

Jude is a producer and has been the CEO of Chocolate City since June 2015.  He won Best Hip Hop and Best New Act at the 2009 MTV Africa Music Awards, and was nominated in the Best International Act category at the BET Awards in 2010.

2017 Tutu Fellow Yap Boum II has been on the front line of the ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo since it began more than a year ago, in one of the deadliest  ebola epidemics on record.   In July, the outbreak was designated a an international health emergency by the World Health Organisation.

Yap is the regional representative for Epicentre Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, and has been directly involved in a Phase III trial ebola vaccine that is being used to reduce the numbers of people infected by the disease. Al Jazeera interviewed him about how the struggle to contain the disease is going.

A project implemented on Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea by 2017 Tutu Fellow Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba to prevent malaria has won the P3 Impact Award at the 2019 Concordia Summit. In 2016, malaria killed 445,000 people, most were young children in sub-Saharan Africa.  The award was announced by the Office of Global Partnerships at the US Department of State, along with the University of Virginia and Concordia.  The P3 Impact Award recognizes leading cross-sector collaborations that feature public, private, nonprofit, or non-governmental organizations addressing societal challenges.

Nigeria's Business Day has written a lengthy profile on the groundbreaking work that 2007 Tutu Fellow Mezuo Nwuneli has done in financing and agribusiness.  It tracks how his company, Sahel Capital, started in agribusiness by backing a startup after discovering that a local noodle company was importing 50 tons of chili pepper a month. 

Mezuo and his wife, who ran the company, believed that chili could be sourced in Nigeria and set out to facilitate import substitution. This was a change from their initial business plan, which was to produce jams, spreads, spices, and seasonings.

Two Tutu Fellows are on the list of the Africa Youth Awards 2019 100 Most Influential Young Africans.  The list, which was published on 02 October, recognises young Africans whose work has impacted lives across the continent.  The two Fellows on the 2019 list were Rachel Nyaradzo Adams, who was in the Tutu Fellows Class of 2011; and, Nozipho Mbanjwa who was in last year's Class.

The list - which is now in it's fourth year - is comprised of people from 32 countries and celebrates the work of young Africans passionate about changing the narrative of their continent.

A lot of work is done on the sidelines when the UN General Assembly meets, and in October, global business Dalberg, partnered with The Africa Center and the African Leadership Institute to launch the Africa@Work: Future Forum initiative in New York City.  The initiative brought together leaders and innovators from across Africa and the world to create a shared vision around today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities – especially those related to African youth and employment. 

Dalberg partner and 2019 Fellow Robin Miller said that Africa@Work provided curated conversations between Africans and the Diaspora that deepened a shared understanding of African labor market complexities; highlighted and accelerated innovative ideas; and channeled investments towards solutions that positively impact the future of work  in Africa.

James Mwangi, a 2009 Tutu Fellow and the Executive Director of the Dalberg Group, has been appointed to the Board of the Skoll Foundation. Mwangi has dedicated the last 20 years to building the Dalberg Group into an organisation that fuels inclusive growth globally.  He started in New York, building Dalberg’s first business, then expanded through Africa.

Throughout this time of growth, Mwangi says he has looked to the Skoll Foundation for inspiration. The Skoll Foundation was founded in 1999 invests in and connects social entrepreneurs and innovators to help them solve the world’s most pressing problems.  It has invested approximately $530 million worldwide.

2019 Tutu Fellow Akintunde Ayebode has been tweeting about how he experienced the Tutu Leadership programme this past year.  In the past, Fellows have described it as being a deeply personal journey but haven't necessarily been public on social media.   Akin is a Special Adviser for Ekiti State Government, in Nigeria, where he is responsible for leading the state government’s efforts to make Ekiti an attractive destination for investors and innovation driven enterprises.

The cover photo is a tweet of his in which he says: Asked to submit an iconic photo representing our respective countries for a @TutuFellows class. There are many reasons I chose Ken Geiger & William Snyder’s Pulitzer winning photo. What does it mean to you?  The article below is a compilation of some of Akin's tweets about the Tutu Fellowship programme.

2014 Tutu Fellow Linda Kasonde has announced the formation of a new organization called Chapter One Foundation, which she says will be used to promote human rights, constitutionalism and the rule of law in Zambia. It will do so through litigation, advocacy and civic education.  Linda says the foundation was named after Chapter One of the Laws of Zambia, which enshrines the Constitution as the supreme law by which every Zambian, regardless of status, is bound.

Chapter One is already petitioning the Constitutional Court on a matter of law in which it argues a bill limiting how the President can be removed from power is unconstitutional.

2017 Tutu Fellow Rori Tshabala made these moving remarks at the opening of SPARK Schools Rosslyn hub, north of Pretoria in August 2019.  SPARK Schools is the brainchild of another Class of 2017 Fellow, Stacey Brewer, who is a cofounder of the schools.  Stacey's vision was to create a sustainable financial model for low-fee private schools in South Africa offering high-quality education.  Since the first one opened in 2012, the network has expanded to serve more than 10 thousand students at 21 schools. These dry statistics are belied by Rori's comments at the opening of the school.  He said:

  My grandmother, at that time a widowed mother of six with pitifully little formal education, used to walk these very fields, through rain and shine, from farm to farm buying the fruit and vegetables that she would then walk many load-bearing miles more to go and sell on the side of the road in order to earn what little she could to feed her children.

2013 Tutu Fellow Monica Musonda is taking over as Board Chair of Zambian Breweries. To avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest, Monica chose to leave ZamSugar prior to accepting the position at Zambian Breweries. ZamSugar supplies ingredients to some of Zambia's most popular beverages.

Monica took over the position from Valentine Chitalu, who has been the board chair for the past decade. In taking over the chair, she becomes the first female board chair of Zambian Breweries. Monica, who is the founder and CEO of Java Foods and a lawyer, is having a year in which her capability is being called upon by multiple organisations.  

The following essay is by Ronak Gopaldas, a 2019 Tutu Fellow. The Tutu Fellowship Programme requires each participant to write an essay on leadership in Africa. The quality of submissions is very high as demonstrated by this piece by Ronak. He points out that by the year 2050, Africa will have the largest population and workforce in the world and will be too big to ignore. 

But its demographic bulge could either be a huge boon, or disastrous. Despite its size and scale, Africa is constantly referred to as having “vast potential,” whilst being excluded in global affairs.  With the right leadership in place, there is an opportunity to reshape this state of affairs.  His essay follows.