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2015 Tutu Fellow Wiebe Boer PhD has been appointed to serve on the the UN Technical Working Group 5: Finance and Investment, joining 27 other sector experts. This cross-cutting and multidisciplinary UN Technical Working Group addresses “how public and private finance and investment can be mobilized and leveraged to achieve the 2025 Milestones, SDG7 and carbon neutrality, taking also into consideration enabling mechanisms such as the fiscal response to COVID-19, fossil fuel subsidy reform; green investment regulation; risk management and insurance.”

The objective of Working Group 5 is is to distill the expertise and inputs from the members of the working group to identify recommendations that are “ambitious, innovative and fit-for-purpose, of high impact, and replicable at scale across geographies and themes”.

BBC Radio has celebrated the 60th Anniversary of its Focus on Africa programme, and as part of its look back, it interviewed 2015 Tutu Fellow, Uduak Amimo.

In the interview, Uduak discussed joining the BBC's Africa service in 2002 and having to cover hostilities in Sudan, Nigeria and other countries.  When she became a senior producer and presenter on Focus on Africa it was a time when the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency was being waged in Uganda.The LRA was a cult-like movement that initiated conflict in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The insurgency was accused of human rights violations and the use of child soldiers.

Unlocking Africa's Business Potential by 2015 Tutu Fellow Landry Signé has recently been released and has had good feedback and editorial reviews. Landry makes the case that Africa welcomes business investment and offers some of the world's highest returns and impacts.  The book examines business opportunities in the eight sectors with the highest potential returns on private investment in Africa.  These sectors include: consumer markets, agriculture and agri-processing, information and communication technology, manufacturing, oil and gas, tourism, banking, and infrastructure and construction.

He says Africa is one of the world's fastest growing regions and by 2030 will be home to nearly $1.7 billion people and an estimated $6.7 trillion in consumer and business spending.  Landry is a prolific writer and thinker, having authored or co-authored more than 27 manuscripts, books, articles and book chapters, with several books dealing with Africa's economy. 

2015 Tutu Fellow Wiebe Boer’s investment fund is backing solar power companies providing renewable energy to critical emergency response centres across Nigeria during the Covid-19 crisis. Wiebe’s company, All On, realised quickly that COVID-19 was placing intense demands on Nigeria’s healthcare system due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So All On created an emergency relief fund to provide healthcare organisations with reliable local solar power.  It is allowing frontline healthcare workers to have essential services they need to combat the virus and care for patients.

The relief fund provides $500,000 to selected renewable energy companies for rapid installation of solar installations to critical emergency relief centres across Nigeria.

2015 Tutu Fellow Mosunmola Cynthia Umoru has drawn on her contacts and network to minimise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the most vulnerable in her community. She is the Founder and Chief Realization Officer, of Honeysuckles PTL Ventures, which engages in farming, food production, processing and distribution of a wide range of products.

In one week, she and her network jointly raised a total of N6,866,800 in cash, and food valued at N750,000 (about $20,000USD).

2015 Tutu Fellow Landry Signé has been appointed to head a new programme at Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management, that has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and Globalization 4.0 Initiative. He is the new professor and Founding Co-Director of the inititiative. 

The Director General and Dean of Thunderbird, Sanjeev Khagram, says that the school is excited that Landry is joining them. He said Landry 'is a terrific scholar, respected worldwide for his grasp of the political economy of growth, sustainable development, governance, fragile and failed states, regional integration, and business in Africa.

This December saw a day of celebration as a group of 20 pioneering Strathmore University graduates from Kenya and Nigeria marked an important milestone at the innovative AGCO Agribusiness Qualification (AAQ). To commemorate the milestone, a lively graduation ceremony was held at Strathmore University’s campus in Nairobi, Kenya. The event was keynoted by Nuradin Osman, Vice President and General Manager of AGCO for Africa - and a 2013 Tutu Fellow.

In his remarks at a celebratory dinner, Nuradin shared with the gathering how the programme started from a simple conversation he and I held during a November 2016 alumni reunion of the Tutu Fellows at Nirox in South Africa.