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2009 Tutu Fellow James Mwangi is one of the recipients of the 2022 Climate Breakthrough Award, the largest climate action award for individuals. James shares this year’s award is with Isabel Cavelier Adarve, a former Colombian climate diplomat; and a trio of ground-breaking campaigners in India: Brikesh Singh, Sanjiv Gopal and Vinuta Gopal. The award provides a $3 million multi-year flexible grant to 'extraordinary changemakers to pursue ambitious climate-change mitigation ideas that have the potential to transform entire industries or countries and materially change the lives of millions of people.

2009 Tutu Fellow James Mwangi connects the dots between climate change and climate action in his TED Talk from June 2022 in New York.  He argues that with the planet missing the IPCC emissions goals that negatively impact climate change, it will be necessary to both push harder on that front, and then also remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere at a massive scale. He says that estimates suggest that the world will need to remove 5-16 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every single year by 2050. 

The Rift Valley, he says, provides a scalable way to remove carbon from the air - and end energy poverty.

A 2009 Tutu Fellow’s Community project, Tswelopele Sisterhood and Girls Club in Alexandra, which was co-founded by Geci Karuri-Sebina PhD, recently got a boost from another Tutu Fellow.  2018 Fellow Edzai Zvobwo and his nonprofit, The Education Support Forum, have partnered with Tswelopele to facilitate the girls' skills development by donating 30 tablets to help expand virtual learning. The tablets will also help supplement tutoring and access to e-resources during this period as schools are disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In order to be awarded the Tutu Fellowship, participants are required to complete three assignments, one of which is a community project in keeping with the servant leadership tenet that underpins the programme.

2009 Tutu Fellow Andrew Mwenda asks the audience at a TED talk in 2007 to reframe the "African question" - to look beyond the media's stories of poverty, civil war and helplessness and see the opportunities for creating wealth and happiness throughout the continent.

Andrew points out that the solution to Africa’s problems is not to increase the foreign aid, because that it comes with reinforcing negative narratives - but instead to reframe how aid can be best used. Among the consequences of the continent being seen in a bad light is that it appears as if it is only a place of despair, rather than one of great potential and opportunities.