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.

Our hyperconnected age reveals both global fractures and unprecedented opportunities for compassion-driven collaboration. From ecological symbiosis to psychological healing, care emerges as the foundation for collective flourishing. Leading with care demands patience over quick fixes, repair over retribution, and intergenerational responsibility over short-term gain. It is the bridge between the known and the unknown—the most powerful technology of our humanity, and the key to shaping a future rooted in reciprocity, justice, and hope.  

The essay, titled The Courage to Care, follows in full below: 

It feels like the world is unraveling faster than ever. Climate catastrophes, social unrest, economic volatility, and political upheaval flood all our screens daily. It’s easy to wonder: are we facing more crises than any generation before? A polycrisis? (Tooze, 2022) Or is it that our hyperconnected world simply magnifies every fissure and friction, making it impossible to look away? Let me offer another perspective: despite the noise, data shows many dimensions of human well-being have improved globally over recent decades—life expectancy, access to education, and reductions in extreme poverty, to name a few (Rosling, 2018). What often feels like unprecedented chaos is, in part, the clarity that connectivity—digital technologies and global media—brings. Our awareness has expanded exponentially, spilling over borders and social divides, illuminating problems that were once too far away or invisible or ignored. But so too has our capacity to respond with compassion and collaboration. 

This expanded consciousness reminds us of a powerful, yet often overlooked, truth: at the core of our collective resilience is our profound capacity to care. Care is the subtle force knitting our fractured world back together. It is not just an emotion or a momentary gesture, but a deep-rooted, expansive energy that opens pathways to connection, transformation, and healing. The paradox of care is that it is simultaneously tender and revolutionary—inviting us beyond the safe confines of certainty into the rich, multidimensional unknown of relationality. It is the force that binds us across time and space, across internal landscapes and external relationships, shaping how we lead, how we live, and how we imagine a future that is radically different yet tenderly connected to the past.

Care

Care is the bridge between what we know and what we must learn to trust. It pulses with possibility—endless colors and dimensions. Fear, on the contrary, shrinks us into binaries and fixed narratives. Psychology teaches us that trauma and uncertainty naturally incline us toward what is known, habitual patterns that promise safety (Siegel, 2012; van der Kolk, 2015). Yet this same science points to care as a healing agent: it rewires our nervous systems, cultivates resilience, and opens pathways to empathy beyond our immediate selves (Schore, 2012). Care invites us to risk the unknown, to embrace the complexity of interdependence with courage rather than retreat.

Our inclination to connection is no accident. In nature, symbiosis—the mutually beneficial relationships between species—is ubiquitous. It is a fundamental ecological principle that sustains life (Bronstein, 2015). Coral reefs, mycorrhizal fungi, even human gut microbiomes thrive because of interlinked care systems. The natural world teaches us that flourishing depends not on domination but on reciprocal relationships, on tender attentiveness to the needs and limits of others. The physicist Fritjof Capra (1996) argues that this web of relationships is the very fabric of reality, a dynamic system where energy and matter are inseparable from the patterns of connection. Chemistry echoes this, showing how bonds between atoms create molecules whose properties are irreducible to their parts (Atkins & Friedman, 2011). In essence, relationship is the root condition of existence.

Psychology also deepens our grasp of care as relational intelligence. Esther Perel’s research on relational intelligence explores how emotional awareness, empathy, and vulnerability enable authentic connection and growth, both personally and collectively (Perel, 2017). This intelligence is not a fixed trait but a skill to be cultivated, one that thrives in environments where trust extends beyond individual survival toward collective flourishing. It counters the isolation and fragmentation so common in our modern world by orienting us toward mutual responsibility and imaginative collaboration.

At the core of this essay is a conviction: the single most powerful agent of transformation we already hold is our humanity—our capacity to care. Not just care as feeling, but care as a form of leadership that transcends time and certainty. This leadership is expansive, thinking multidimensionally and intergenerationally. It honors those who came before us and those yet to come, weaving past wisdom with future imagination in the present moment. It refuses the false choice between progress and preservation, embracing instead a radical responsibility that is political, ecological, and deeply ethical.
Joan Tronto’s foundational work on the ethics of care (1993) frames care as a political act that encompasses attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness. It is a framework that demands we rethink governance, not as control over nature and people but as relational accountability. Carol Gilligan (1982) extended this to feminist ethics, arguing for a moral lens that values connection and context over abstraction and universality. These insights are echoed by Sandra Harding’s standpoint theory, which highlights the epistemic power of marginalized perspectives in reorienting knowledge production toward justice and care (Harding, 1991).

Kim TallBear (2013) offers a crucial expansion: care is not solely a human concern but extends to the more-than-human world through Indigenous relationality. Indigenous scholars remind us that ecosystems are kin, not resources—challenging extractive logics that dominate dominant technoscientific paradigms. Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology (2019) critiques the veneer of technological benevolence, urging abolitionist design that centers justice and care at its core. Donna Haraway (2016) pushes us to “stay with the trouble” of entanglement, to build kinship networks that defy hierarchical kingdoms in favour of mutual flourishing. This relational care is not static; it is dynamic and expansive, flowing across generations and ecosystems.

This expansive care contrasts sharply with the constricting nature of fear, which contracts our vision into binaries—safe/dangerous, friend/enemy, us/them. Fear enforces rigidity, fixed roles, and scarcity mindsets, making it difficult to trust the unknown. Like in psychology, where trauma responses reveal how people cling to familiar, protective patterns—even when harmful—to preserve a sense of control (van der Kolk, 2015), societies, too, can become trapped in cycles of fear and defensiveness, wary of the kind of transformative care that demands both vulnerability and imagination.

In the face of systemic crises, care requires radical optimism—a form of resistance and strategy. Rebecca Solnit (2004) insists that hope is not denial but an active call to imagination, a light in darkness that enables collective action. Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy (2017) develops this by rooting optimism in fractal care—small acts of connection that scale and adapt across systems. bell hooks (2000) reminds us that love and hope are the foundations of liberation, inseparable from political struggle. Even speculative fiction writer Octavia Butler (1998) envisions hope as rebellion in apocalyptic futures, a testament to care’s enduring power amid despair.

These ideas resonate with dialectical and systemic theories of history and society. Hegelian dialectics and Peter Turchin’s cliodynamics show how history oscillates between forces—when extraction and domination reach a peak, counterforces emerge to restore balance (Turchin, 2016). George Lakoff’s “strict father” vs. “nurturant parent” frames illuminate how authoritarian politics provoke surges of care-oriented values (Lakoff, 1996). Karl Polanyi’s “double movement” theory (1944) similarly describes how market overreach triggers social pushes for moral realignment and regulation. Perhaps the pendulum is beginning its slow arc away from disconnection and extraction, back toward our shared humanity? But if that is where we are headed, are we truly preparing our future leaders to step into these roles—with the depth of care, courage, and imagination that such a moment demands?

Leilani

To imagine what such care-based leadership could look like, let us envision a future African leader whose life and work embody these principles across time and space.

In 2040, across the vibrant continent of Africa, a new kind of leadership is emerging—rooted not in power over others but in profound care and connection. At the helm of this transformation is President Leilani, the first woman President of the African Union, whose leadership embodies a radical vision of relational responsibility and expansive hope.

Leilani’s day begins not in isolation but surrounded by the voices and wisdom of her people—elders from the Sahel, youth from the urban innovation hubs of Lagos and Cape Town, and Indigenous leaders from the Congo Basin. Her office, situated in Addis Ababa, pulses with a spirit of collaboration and co-creation rather than command. Here, decisions are shaped by circles of dialogue that stretch from village elders to scientists, artists to farmers—each perspective woven into the fabric of continental policy.

She leads with a care that transcends borders and political terms. She prioritizes listening, nurturing, and coordinating diverse voices rather than imposing rigid solutions. Her policies align with the rhythms of local ecologies and economies. She champions community-led initiatives, supports decentralized African innovations, and protects water catchment areas while restoring degraded lands.

Her relational intelligence—balancing compassion with pragmatism, vulnerability with strength—shapes how she responds to crises. Whether facing droughts, climate shocks, or political unrest, President Leilani calls for calm and collective action rooted in care and radical optimism. She models that fear narrows possibilities, while care opens worlds of creativity and resilience, creating space for diverse perspectives and ideas.

Under Leilani’s leadership, Africa’s solutions—born from millennia of knowledge and innovation—take their rightful place on the global stage in a way that invites curiosity and dialogue and collaboration. She lifts up the continent’s unique ways of life, ideas, and epistemologies, demonstrating that leadership rooted in care is critical not just for Africa’s future, but for the future of humanity and the planet.

Africa’s Wisdom

Under leaders like Leilani, the continent’s wealth of knowledge, innovations, and relational wisdom does not remain local; it becomes a guiding force for the world’s future. And as it should. Across African philosophical traditions, interconnectedness is elegantly articulated. The Nguni concept of ubuntu—“I am because we are”—illuminates our shared humanity and ethical responsibility toward one another (Mbiti, 1969; Tutu, 1999). But African thought is plural and diverse: the Yoruba notion of Omoluabi emphasizes character formed through communal ethics and accountability (Akinpelu, 1979), while Afrocentric scholars like Ifi Amadiume foreground relationality between humans and the environment as foundational to African cosmologies (Amadiume, 1987). These perspectives offer rich, embodied understandings of care as an active force, not a passive sentiment.

Contemporary African scholars and social scientists apply these frameworks to measure flourishing differently, capturing not only GDP but relational and ecological well-being. A recent study by McGregor et al. (2023) introduces novel indices accounting for social cohesion, environmental stewardship, and cultural vitality across African nations, challenging one-dimensional global metrics. Another study by Adeoti and Moyo (2022) reveals how African innovations often go overlooked because they prioritize relational and communal needs over Western benchmarks of “progress.” These insights compel us to redefine success through a care-centered lens.

Reflections

To lead with care at the core is not the easy path—it is, in fact, one of the hardest. Care is often mistaken for softness or sentimentality or just general fluffiness, but in truth it demands immense courage. It requires sitting in discomfort, holding complexity without rushing toward simple answers, and making decisions that honour not just the present moment but generations to come. It calls for listening with patience even when the truth is inconvenient; prioritising repair over retribution; and resisting the seductive pull of quick wins in favour of slow, lasting change. It means staying open when fear urges closure, extending compassion when cynicism feels safer, and taking responsibility for the well-being of others when it would be easier to retreat into self-interest.

Leadership shaped by this expansive care is less about command and more about stewardship—listening to the rhythms of community and environment, much like symbiotic relationships that adapt through constant feedback (Kimmerer, 2013). It embraces uncertainty not with rigid control but with openness and curiosity, recognising that the unknown is fertile ground for creativity and growth. Such leadership mirrors the internal work described in Internal Family Systems therapy (Schwartz, 1995), where healing fractured selves makes possible more whole, compassionate engagement with others and the world.
This is leadership stretched across time—grounded in the legacies of ancestors and mindful of the futures of descendants. It acts as a trusteeship of the shared world, knowing that today’s choices ripple outward for generations. It requires courage to inhabit complexity, to hold multiple truths without collapsing into fear or cynicism. Care in this vision is expansive: widening our moral imagination, deepening our emotional capacities, and enlarging our political possibilities. It is an invitation to build kinship with difference and to find common cause across divides.

This is not a utopian dream but a grounded, evidence-based call to reimagine leadership and community—shifting from extraction and control toward reciprocity and stewardship, and trusting in our collective ability to heal and thrive.

We are at a crossroads—though, in truth, we are always at one and we will face countless ones in our lifetime. Do we lean into the unknown, trusting it and meeting it with care, compassion, and curiosity? Or do we cling to what is familiar, to patterns that no longer serve us (or perhaps serve a minority)? The unknown holds expansion; the known, constraint. This particular moment in history leaves us with no real choice but to step into care—into the vast, uncertain territory where new worlds are made. And I am more and more convinced that the most radical technology we possess is care itself.

References

• Adeoti, J., & Moyo, T. (2022). Rethinking African Innovation: Relationality and Communal Values in Technological Development. African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development, 14(1), 45-61.
• Amadiume, I. (1987). Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. Zed Books.
• Atkins, P., & Friedman, R. (2011). Molecular Quantum Mechanics (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.
• Bell, D. (2020). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity.
• Bronstein, J. L. (2015). The Study of Mutualism. Ecology, 96(3), 711–711.
• Brown, A. M. (2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press.
• Capra, F. (1996). The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. Anchor Books.
• Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press.
• Harding, S. (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Cornell University Press.
• Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
• Hooks, B. (2000). All About Love: New Visions. HarperCollins.
• Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
• Lakoff, G. (1996). Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t. University of Chicago Press.
• McGregor, J. A., et al. (2023). Measuring Wellbeing and Flourishing in African Contexts: New Indices for Policy and Practice. World Development, 157, 105921.
• Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African Religions and Philosophy. Heinemann.
• Perel, E. (2017). The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. HarperOne.
• Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press.

Essay by Fiona Wanjiku Moejes for the 2025 Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme.