The African Leadership Institute, once again, has a very strong cohort of emerging African leaders for the prestigious Tutu Leadership Fellowship for 2018. Amongst nearly 300 nominees of outstanding quality from over 30 African countries, 18 of Africa’s highest potential new leaders were selected to take part in the programme. Including the candidates nominated by our sponsoring organisations, the candidates represent ten different African countries and various industries, and range from 30 to 39 years of age. The selected candidates demonstrate the incredible wealth and breadth of leadership talent that exists in Africa’s youth. The biographies of the 2018 candidates follow:
- Jean-Guy Afrika
- Mical Agina
- Temi Marcella Awogboro
- Claudia Pinto Baptista
- Alice Namuli Blazevic
- Sizwe Damane
- Mohamed El-Dahshan
- Ibrahim El-Mirghani
- Sibongakonke Fumba
- Samira Hassanally
- Chude Jideonwo
- Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg PhD
- Serah Makka
- Hassanatu Mansaray PhD
- Caroline Mbabazi
- Nozipho Mbanjwa
- Makoena Mabusela
- Dr Eric Muchangi
- Babalwe Nonkenge
- Lynette Ntuli
- Omoni Oboli
- Oluseun Onigbinde
- Aminu Umar Sadiq
- Judy Sikuza
- Zoë Karl-Waithaka
- Adebola Williams
- Edzai Zvobwo
Jean-Guy Afrika
Rwanda
Jean-Guy Afrika is a public policy expert with deep specialization in trade, regional integration, and strategic planning and execution. He works for the African Development Bank, where he coordinates one of the bank’s pioneering policy initiatives, the Africa Visa Openness Index (AVOI). The Index aims to relax visa restrictions on the continent to facilitate the movement of people. To date, it has encouraged close to 10 African countries to ease visa restrictions, thereby unlocking enormous potential for intra-regional trade, investments and tourism. Jean-Guy is also the Coordinator of the Africa Trade Fund, the Bank’s largest trade-related technical assistance fund. Before joining the Bank, Jean-Guy worked as senior policy expert with the East African Community (EAC) and director of export promotion in the Rwanda Investment & Export Promotion Agency. In 2010, he was recognized by the Chairperson of the EAC Council of Ministers for special contributions in the finalization of the EAC Common Market Protocol and in 2012, his alma mater (George Mason University) honored him with the Distinguished Young Alumnus Awards for outstanding achievements in the field of policy. Beyond work, Jean-Guy is passionate about and holds deep industry knowledge of e-commerce and digital marketing in the African context.
Mical Agina
Kenya
Mical Maganda Agina is the Group Head of Tax at Centum Investment Company Plc.(Centum), a position she has held since January 2014. Her roles at Centum include tax planning and management, tax structuring, tax compliance, deal structuring, and liaising with the Kenya Revenue Authority. During her time at Centum, she has been participated in the Centum Bond Issue of more than $60 million; negotiation and completion of investment agreements with business partners in the Two Rivers project; and acquisition of majority stake in K-Rep Bank.
Prior to joining Centum, Mical was a Senior Tax Advisor at KPMG Kenya for 5 years where she helped foreign investors in Kenya maximize value. She also gained extensive experience in tax compliance and advisory services; handled Kenya Revenue Authority audits; and managed dispute resolution arising from such audits.
Mical is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a member of the Institute of Certified Public Secretaries of Kenya and the Law Society of Kenya.
Temi Marcella Awogboro
Nigeria
Temi Marcella Awogboro has more than a decade of experience in finance across developed and growth markets. As an investment professional, Temi has committed and deployed nearly US$ 500 million in private partnership capital across strategic sectors on the African continent in a bid to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Temi is passionate about investing in; building; and cultivating disruptive, transformative institutions that will emerge initially as regional champions and as tomorrow’s global challengers. Temi started her career at Goldman Sachs International, initially as a Derivatives trader. She was promoted to managing a portfolio of structured equity derivatives, then as an Investment Analyst. She was named a Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Scholar and was a recipient of the Goldman Sachs and Institute of International Education’s Global Leaders Award.
Temi is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including The M&A Advisor's European Emerging Leaders Award, and has been recognized as the Female Lead’s Top 20 Women under 20, and Management Today/The Telegraph’s 35 Women Under 35.
Claudia Pinto Baptista
South Africa
Claudia Pinto Baptista is the HR Officer at Rio Tinto Johannesburg. Claudia provides human resource support to Rio Tinto Management Services and Rio Tinto Mining & Exploration, servicing clients in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia. Her work includes recruitment, psychometrics, induction, visa applications, IA coordination, legislative guidance, participating in grievances, performance management, creation and issuing of employment contracts, updating policies and procedures. She began her corporate career at Rio Tinto Management Services South Africa in 2011, at the Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique project. Prior to Rio Tinto, she worked in the retail and FMCG sector.
Claudia is passionate about human development and how one may reach ones full potential. Claudia puts this into practice through practicing a healthy lifestyle and pushing herself mentally and physically by living an active life and by training daily in the Chinese martial art, Kung Fu. A quote by Bruce Lee best describes how life should be lived: “Absorb what is useful; discard what is not; add what is uniquely your own”
Alice Namuli Blazevic
Uganda
Alice Namuli Blazevic is a Partner at Katende, Ssempebwa & Company Advocates, specialising in Commercial transactions. She has over 13 years’ experience in commercial transactions, specialising in projects and infrastructure finance, public-private partnerships, cross-border transactions, and the energy sector. She also specialises in technology law and has a keen interest in blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency industry. Alice represents several Fintechs that are reshaping the mode of doing business in Uganda and Africa as a whole.
Alice is the Vice President of the Uganda Law Society and also serves as the Uganda Country Leader for Legal Business Women For Africa (LABFA), a multi jurisdictional network of women transactional lawyers and corporate leaders in Africa and beyond. She is a Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Program Fellow and during her fellowship, worked with Hogan Lovells LLP, United Kingdom in 2015.
Alice has also founded Coffee With Alice, a mentorship program for aspiring lawyers, law students and young advocates aimed at bridging the gap between the theory learnt at law school and the challenges faced in legal practice. The program is also aimed at nurturing young leaders and teaching them how to give back.
Sizwe Damane
South Africa
Sizwe Damane is currently the Chief of Staff to the Barclays Africa Group Chief Credit Officer, supporting the GCCO in setting and executing the strategic objectives for managing credit risk across the businesses the Group operates in on the continent. Before joining Barclays Africa he has had a lengthy and successful career in the financial services industry. Sizwe is passionate about community involvement and he has influenced corporate suppliers to donate services and equipment to start a careers centre at the University of Fort Hare. He also initiated the Everybody has a Story to Tell project at Barclays Africa. The initiative uses the power of words through common experiences to give South African youth hope that they have a future, despite the difficult circumstances they currently find themselves in, including physical and emotional abuse, poverty, and teenage pregnancy. Sizwe is part of the 2018 Symphonia for South Africa Partners for Possibility project as one of the business leaders on a partnership process with a principal from an under-resourced school in South Africa.
Mohamed El Dahshan
Egypt
Mohamed El Dahshan is the managing director of OXCON, a research and consulting firm working on issues of economic development, freedom of expression, and internet governance in Africa and the Middle East, with a focus on fragile and post-conflict countries. In addition, he is a Nonresident Fellow with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, and a co-founder of Afrilanthropy, a philanthropic investment advisory firm. Prior to this, his international development career took him to the United Nations, the African Development Bank, and the World Bank; he was also Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development.
Mohamed regularly writes and lectures on such topics as political transitions, economic development and entrepreneurship, and technology. He is the co-author of Diaries of the Revolution, as well as several book chapters, academic papers, and over 100 articles in leading publications including Foreign Policy, the New York Times, and the Guardian. Mohamed has received the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalism Award for his writing. He is a Fellow of the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Councils.
Ibrahim El-Mirghani
Sudan
Ibrahim El-Mirghani is the Federal State Minister of Information and Communications Technologies in the government of Sudan and is the youngest minister in the government. He is the spokesperson of the Democratic Unionist Party, a leading traditional political party in Sudan, which had been in opposition until joining the current government in an alliance. Within the coalition government, he is part of the leadership team, serving on the political and leadership committees as well as heading his ministry.
Outside of government, Ibrahim has had business holdings in media and has farming interests in Eastern Sudan in cash crops and animal production. Members of the El-Mirghani family have been key members of the few democracies in Sudanese history, including presidential councils, parliamentary leaders and ministers. Many Sudanese consider him the heir of this democratic legacy. While a student in Egypt he became a student leader, organising Sudanese students and helping needy students with financial, logistical and study support.
Sibongakonke Fumba
South Africa
Sibongakonke “Kk
” Fumba joined Thomson Reuters in 2013 and manages the firm's major accounts across its emerging markets. He considers himself a born entrepreneur, who opened up a banking account at the age of 10 with his own money made from selling biscuits and sweets in primary school. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters he worked as a Sales Manager at LexisNexis working with, lawyers, courts and the public sector.
With his roots back in the rural village of Mount Ayliff in the Eastern Cape, he has a passionate belief in instilling in the youth that they can become anything they want to be and that ones environment doesn’t determine who you become. He also believes that mentorship plays a vital role in learning leadership and that everyone ought to be aware of the influence they bear. He studied Television at Wits University and he believes this has helped him bring his creative side to complex situations.
Samira Hassanally
South Africa
Samira Hassanally is a Director in the Absa Banking team based in Johannesburg who is responsible for the equity capital markets initiative. Initially joining Absa/Barclays Africa in 2007 as part of the Barclays EMEA graduate programme, she spent time in debt capital markets and securitisation. This was followed by eight years in corporate finance and mergers and aquisitions, leading various transactions across Africa. In 2017, she was tasked with building the equity capital markets platform both in South Africa and across Africa.
Samira is an alumni of the 2013 class of the International Executive Development Program and participated in the Absa/Barclays Africa leadership and talent development programme “Masedi” that was initiated by the firm’s Banking on Women forum. This latter programme later won an award for investing in young women at the South African Gender Mainstreaming Awards in 2016.
Chude Jideonwo
Nigeria
Chude Jideonwo is the founder of Joy Inc, a company started to mainstream the research and science on human flourishing and positive emotions. His goal with the company is to transform culture and build a new generation focused on the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. All of Joy, Inc.'s profits are invested in charities. Chude has been a Forbes 30 under 30 honouree; a CNBC Young Business Leader of the Year winner; and a World Fellow at Yale University. His writing and work have been featured on the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, Aljazeera, the Huffington Post and the Financial Times, and he is the author of two books, Are We The Turning Point Generation? and How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump. He teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Pan Atlantic University. A former board member at Microsoft 4Afrika, he sits on the boards of RED and the Oando Foundation. Before Joy, Inc., he led the African media group, RED for more than a decade where he worked on national elections and social movements in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Liberia.
Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg PhD
Kenya
Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg leads African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD). AWARD is working towards inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for the African continent by strengthening the production and dissemination of agricultural research and innovation that is more gender responsive. Prior to joining AWARD, Wanjiru founded and served as the Executive Director of Akili Dada, an award-winning leadership incubator that invests in high-achieving young women from under-resourced families, who are passionate about driving change in their communities. She served as an assistant professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and a lecturer in International Relations at Hekima College, a constituent college of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. Her academic research and teaching interests centered on African politics, gender, international relations, ethnicity, and democratization, and the role of technology in social activism.
Wanjiru has received widespread recognition for her work, including being honored as a White House Champion of Change by the Obama administration; was named one of the 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine; recognized as a Ford Foundation Champion of Democracy; and, named one of Kenya’s Top 40 Women Under Age 40.
Makoena Mabusela
South Africa
Makoena Mabusela is a Senior Transactor within Investec Bank in which her purview includes marketing aviation financial services to the broader aviation sector worldwide. Before joining Investec Bank, Makoena worked for Nedbank Capital within the newly-created Aircraft Finance Division; at Kumba Iron Ore in corporate finance; and she spent three years at SAA where her aircraft financing portfolio was valued at approximately R14 billion. Makoena grew up in a poor, rural area of Ga-Matlala in Limpopo. She became a successful Chartered Accountant whilst studying part-time and raising a family of five. Aside for her corporate experience, she is also an entrepreneur and runs an Events Management Company during her spare time. The business, started in 2016, is growing rapidly and has a turnover of R700k.
Serah Makka
Nigeria
Serah Makka-Ugbabe is passionate about social equity and justice. She is currently the Nigeria Country Director for ONE Campaign, an advocacy and campaigning organisation that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. Serah's career spans work in strategy and evaluation consulting for nonprofits with the Boston-based FSG Social Impact Advisors, to teaching girls English in Kabul, Afghanistan with AidAfghanistan. She has also worked in the financial industry with EFInA to build the digital financial services infrastructure for low income populations.
She was inducted in the 2007 Academy of Achievement and was nominated by the Young People in International Affairs as one of the top 35 Under 35 Young African Leaders in International Affairs. She is also a Trainer at the Africa Institute for Public Policy based in Nigeria.
Hassanatu Mansaray PhD
Sierra Leone
Hassanatu Mansaray is a Senior Policy Specialist at the African Development Bank (AfDB). She is actively involved in the preparation of the AfDB’s operational policies, strategies and sustainable development initiatives in Africa, enabling her to contribute to sustainable and transformative development in Africa. Prior to that, Hassanatu was an Investment and Business Development Officer within the AfDB’s Private Sector Development Department, tasked with forging strategic business partnerships; identifying new lending opportunities; and structuring and executing private sector operations in Africa.
Before joining the AfDB, Hassanatu was a research scientist involved in research within academia, governments, and the pharmaceutical and petroleum industry. Outside of her work in science and international development, Hassanatu is passionately committed to female empowerment and leadership in her home country of Sierra Leone. As the co-founder of Women in Science, Technology and Innovation (WoSTI), she mentors and provides support to girls and young women to help them succeed academically and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
Caroline Mbabazi
Uganda
Caroline Mbabazi is a co-founder and managing partner at Dictum, an African integrated communications firm. The company supports global clients across the private, public and social sectors. A lawyer by training and a design enthusiast, she has worked as a brand, communications and public affairs consultant for a number of African governments, companies and organizations, leading teams that continue to manage and deliver some of the continents most ambitious and successful brands. She has designed and published brand and communications handbooks and is currently a design and content lead supporting Africa’s pavilions at the UAE’s Expo 2020. Caroline is passionate about Africa and its prosperity and believes that how it manages its image is vital to the continent’s transformation. She is an advisor to a variety of start-up efforts with a communications and technology bent and serves on the boards of several groups where she takes an active interest in the confluence of design and technology, expanding democratic freedoms, and entrepreneurialism. She is currently the representative of the Conference of Western Attorney’s General (CWAG) in Rwanda and Uganda; a board member of the Nile project; and an advisor to the Leo Africa Institute.
Nozipho Mbanjwa
South Africa
Nozipho Mbanjwa is a broadcaster and global moderator who has moderated conversations for the World Bank Group, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and its organs, and for multinationals operating in Africa. She is also the Co-founder of The Talent Firm and leads the team in supporting corporate clients to deliver high-impact learning journeys for their black, women, and millennial talent. As a member of faculty for Duke Corporate Education, she contributes to the design and delivery of learning journeys for graduate programmes in Africa for clients such as Barclays, MTN, Liberty, BMW etc. She is part of the CNBC Africa team as an anchor and producer and advocates for the inclusion of youth and women in the African economy.
Prior to her career in broadcasting, Nozipho led the Tata Group’s Corporate Communications and Branding portfolio in Africa, overseeing the brand in 13 African countries. She has served as Executive Director for Umlambo Foundation, driving leadership and management capacity development in underperforming rural schools.
Dr Eric Muchangi
Kenya
Dr. Eric Muchangi is the Respiratory Area Medical Lead for Africa and Developing Countries of Asia at GlaxoSmithKline. Eric is responsible for driving respiratory strategy by providing technical oversight across countries in Africa and Asia. His ultimate objective is to help improve the diagnosis and management of chronic respiratory diseases and to ensure patients have access to high quality drugs. He began his career with GSK in 2015 as a Medical Advisor and in 2017 he was appointed to his current position.
Eric has been involved in the development of the Kenya national asthma curriculum and has advocated for the use of e-learning platforms to deliver asthma education across the country. He has spearheaded initiatives to improve asthma care among the working poor in Nairobi, through the Asthma Care Improvement Project. Prior to joining GSK, Eric worked for the International Rescue Committee as a Health Program Manager at Kakuma Refugee Camp. He served over 150,000 refugees in Kenya’s second largest camp. He is a member of the European Respiratory Society.
Babalwa Nonkenge
South Africa
Babalwa Nonkenge is currently employed as Head of the Edcon Programme, which is a joint venture between ABSA bank and the clothing retailer Edcon. She has previously occupied positions in Global Markets and in Asset Management in the banking sector. In 2017, ABSA selected her to be part of Masedi Excellence – a flagship program for senior women leaders in ABSA. Babalwa is passionate about women’s development, having co-chaired the UCT Women in Business society in 2014 and served on the 2017 steering committee for Banking on Women – an initiative whose sole intent is the promotion of the advancement of women within ABSA. She has also been involved in setting up a Diversity Center within the local Every Nation congregation. The purpose of the center is to build capacity for faith-based organisations to contribute more meaningfully to social cohesion in South Africa. In 2017, she published a peer-reviewed research paper titled Dimensions of Distance: International Flight Connections, Historical determinism and economic relations in Africa.
Lynette Ntuli
South Africa
Lynette Ntuli is the Founding Director and CEO of Innate Investment Solutions, a professional services firm in the built environment that provides property and infrastructure development services and enterprise asset management solutions. Lynette has experience in asset and infrastructure planning; management and development; and the built environment; providing holistic development solutions in Sub Saharan Africa. Lynette has been well profiled in South Africa and across the continent for executive positions she held at a relatively young age.
Passionate about youth development and leadership, Lynette is a Founding Director and Chairman of IgniteSA.com, a national youth oriented platform which curates content and programmes in Education, Skills and Entrepreneurial Development. A recognised professional speaker, Lynette is actively involved at an executive and member level within various gender advocacy, youth lead and industry organisations in South Africa. She is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and Founding Curator; was listed among the St Gallen Symposium 2014 Top 200 Leaders of Tomorrow; is a 2014 Mandela Washington Fellow; is a member of the African Leadership Network; and is the prior Interim Chair of the Commonwealth Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs in the SADC.
Omoni Oboli
Nigeria
Omoni Oboli heads the production and movie equipment rental company Dioni Visions Limited. She is an actress, scriptwriter, producer and director. Multilingual, she has featured in several groundbreaking Nollywood movies. A New York Film academy alumni, Omoni has starred in, written, produced and directed five feature movies; Being Mrs Elliott, produced in 2014; The First Lady, produced in 2015; Okafor's Law (2017); the record-setting Wives on Strike (2016) and the follow-up Wives on Strike: The Revolution in 2017. She currently holds records for the highest-grossing movies at the cinema box office. Omoni has won awards locally and internationally, including Best Actress for both the Harlem International Film Festival and the Los Angeles Movie Awards. Okafor was part of the official selection for the Toronto International Film Festival and the Stockholm International Film Festival in 2016. In 2017, she was the ambassador of the Share Her Journey program at the Toronto International Film Festival.
She is the founder of Omoni Oboli Foundation, which is a nonprofit providing support to less-privileged women and children in her home country.
Oluseun Onigbinde
Nigeria
Oluseun Onigbinde is the Lead Partner and co-founder of BudgIT, a civic organization that works to make public finance data more accessible, transparent and understandable to citizens. Oluseun leads the organisation's strategy development, stakeholder management and fundraising. He is working towards a just, transparent and fair society where every citizen within a community has equal access of information about the fiscal position of their society.
Prior to leading BudgIT, Oluseun worked in two Nigerian financial institutions in areas of business development, strategy and service delivery. He has also worked on federal public administration reform, providing strategic support for the National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO) on data analytics, budget tracking and visualization patterns. In 2015, he helped the International Center for Journalists rethink health journalism in Nigeria.
Oluseun is currently a member of the ONE Africa Policy Advisory Board.
Aminu Umar Sadiq
Nigeria
Aminu Umar Sadiq is a Senior Vice-President of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and the Deputy Head of the Nigeria Infrastructure Fund, one of three ring-fenced funds of the NSIA. He leads the development, execution and management of critical domestic infrastructure projects in the transportation, power, agriculture, healthcare and real-estate sectors. The Investment Authority has co-led the development of a number of strategic infrastructure initiatives in Nigeria, including the establishment of InfraCredit, a specialized financial guarantor catalysing domestic pension funds’ participation in financing domestic infrastructure assets. At the invitation of President Muhammadu Buhari, Aminu led the implementation of the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, a transformative import-substitution program for the domestic production and supply of high-quality fertilizer to Nigerian farmers.
Aminu co-led the development of Nigeria Leadership Initiative's (NLI) Future Leaders Program, a bi-annual leadership development program focused on creating a growing, global network of credible, community-spirited young Nigerian leaders, serving on NLI's inaugural board.
Judy Sikuza
South Africa
Judy Sikuza sees her purpose as inspiring and unearthing possibilities in people and organisations towards fulfilling their highest potential. She is currently the Deputy Executive Director of The Mandela Rhodes Foundation, an education and youth development non-profit based in Cape Town, South Africa dedicated to building exceptional leadership in Africa. Previously, Judy was a facilitator, coach and consultant in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and India working in fields such as banking, climate change, and food security.
Judy is a non-executive Board Director of Oxford University Press (SA). She is also an International Advisory Board member of University of Stellenbosch Business School Executive Education. She has received the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans Award, was one of Sarie magazine’s top 10 women under 30, and selected for Michelle Obama’s Young African Women Leaders forum. Judy is a regular guest speaker on public platforms and has published work in the Mail & Guardian, The Journalist, and Thought Leader.
Zoë Karl-Waithaka
South Africa
Zoë Karl-Waithaka is a Principal in the Johannesburg office of Bain & Company where she focuses on business transformations, particularly orchestrating holistic change programmes, helping design strategy and operational solutions, and implementing mechanisms to sustain results. Since joining Bain, Zoë has worked across the African continent, advising companies in South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Congo Brazzaville, Rwanda and Swaziland. Outside of project work, Zoë leads the Black Leadership Program initiative at her workplace office, which recently helped spearhead a decision by the office to formalise Employment Equity targets (a national priority in South Africa).
Prior to joining Bain, Zoë worked at Bloomberg LP in New York. There she held several roles including Analytics Team Leader and Product Specialist for Bloomberg’s application programme interface (API) for Excel. Her responsibilities in the latter role included the sales, promotion and development of Bloomberg’s Excel add-in product with a focus on client relationships across large banks in the U.S. In 2008, Zoë was nominated for the Sale of the Year Award for her expertise in this area.
Adebola Williams
Nigeria
Adebola Williams is a pioneer at the intersection of media, democracy and social change. He is Co Founder and CEO of RED, which owns Africa’s largest portfolio of youth media brands that engages millions of youths on the continent, including Red Media Africa, StateCraft Inc, The Future Awards Africa, and YNaija.com.
Adebola co-founded EnoughisEnough (EiE), one of Nigeria's foremost civic participation groups and a voice for young people on politics. He was Chairman of the Board until resigning to take the lead on the communication and rebranding of the current Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari. He led the team that shaped the national discourse. He did same in Ghana, helping the opposition candidate win the presidency on his third attempt. He has gone on to consult in other regions in the continent.
Adebola is one of the most recognisable young leaders on the continent carrying the message of enterprise and leadership to inspire hope and faith from Africa to the world. In 2017, he spoke at several conferences in Europe and America, including top ivy leagues schools. He gave a viral address during the Obama summit , where the former president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, gave him a standing ovation. Adebola is a Mandela Washington Fellow, a member of the African Leadership Network, a British Council global changemaker, and he sits on the boards of Africa Business Brain Trust and chairs the Young Entrepreneurs Network board.
Edzai Zvobwo
Zimbabwe
Edzai Conilias Zvobwo is passionate about empowering Africans through mathematics, problem-solving techniques and media. As such, he founded MathsGenius Leadership Institute, The Education Support Forum, and NdiribhoTV. Through these organisations, he has helped create an ecosystem for disseminating information, training, and supporting STEM education to all African people.
A maths evangelist who teaches mathematical thinking as a life skill, Edzai’s quest has seen him being named the SABC Ambassador for STEM; he has been invited to address Fortune 500 C-suite executives at the Mobile 360 North America; was nominated to represent Southern Africa at the inaugural United Nations Youth Skills Day in New York; was invited to be a contributor to the World Bank Group Youth Summit in 2016; has won the 2014 SADC Protocol on Gender and Development award for his contribution to women's empowerment in education; and has partnered with local and global firms in STEM interventions.
Edzai is a firm believer that Africa can be liberated if her people are mathematically literate and are able to apply structured problem-solving thinking methodologies to find solutions to social, political and economic problems that have long affected his home continent. He is currently completing an MSc in Mathematical Statistics.
Selection Process
The 2018 Fellows comprise candidates selected through a competitive, open nomination and selection process, as well as candidates nominated by our sponsoring organisations – Allen & Overy, Barclays Africa Group, Centum, GlaxoSmithKline, Investec, Rio Tinto, and ThomsonReuters.
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