Latest News

2008 Tutu Fellow Bibi Bakare Yusuf has won the Distinguished Africanist Award from ASAUK. The ASAUK - or African Studies Association of the United Kingdom - is a scholarly organization with a membership that includes academics, journalists and broadcasters, civil servants and many others with an interest in Africa. 

Bibi is the award-winning Co-Founder and Publishing Director of Cassava Republic. Bibi explains: “I am a publisher because I am interested in the future. I am interested in contributing to and helping to shape what people in 100, 200 or even 500 years will be discussing and mulling over when they take a walk into the labyrinth of their past that is our present moment. I am interested in how we can create the archive of the future in the present.”

2008 Tutu Fellow, Hopewell Rugoho-Chin'ono, an award-winning journalist, was seized in a raid on 20 July, 2020 at his home in Harare, Zimbabwe. On Facebook Live, he managed to capture the moment the security agents entered his house to arrest him. The clip went viral and captured the imagination of the world, making headlines on various leading channels such as CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, SABC and newspapers like the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post and the UK’s Guardian.

The government seized Hopewell without a warrant and jailed him on a charge of inciting violence after he tweeted about a protest being organised by political activist Jacob Ngarivhume. During court proceedings, Hopewell’s lawyer Doug Coltart said that under cross examination, even the investigating officer admitted there was nothing in Hopewell’s tweets that formed the basis of the charge to incite violence.

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.

The report: The Greater Inclusion of African Youth in Public Service and Governance was launched on August 12, International Youth Day 2020. The report is part of an ongoing partnership between the African Leadership Institute's Project Pakati and the African Union Office of the Youth Envoy to shift young Africans to the centre of the African development narrative. These efforts are being funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. 

The report documents the outcomes of the jointly-organised workshop - The Greater Inclusion of African Youth in Public Service and Governance - that was held from 4th- 5th May 2020 and engaged with policymakers, government officials, and young leaders around best practices and lessons from selected progressive policies aimed at enhancing youth inclusion in governance in Africa.

Africa is the youngest continent on the globe and set to remain so for the next 30 years.

2007 Tutu Fellow Niven Postma has launched her book If you don't do politics, politics will do you...A guide to navigating office politics effectively and ethically (And yes, it is possible.)  Her publication seeks to raise awareness on what office politics actually are, and how being politically intelligent is the single biggest determinant of personal and professional success. The book was launched on 04 August 2020.

Niven reveals that you can use politics to advance your career, benefit your team and build the organisation you are part of.  She points out that politics needn't be unethical, unpleasant and unfair as most people perceive it, so so they shouldn't be avoided.

2007 Tutu Fellow Ipeleng Mkhari is the Founder and CEO of Motseng Investment Holdings which partnered with Malani Padayachee and Associates (MPA) to acquire 100% equity of Mott MacDonald Africa, a South African engineering entity, to create South Africa’s largest black and women owned consulting engineering company.  Ipeleng will be the Chairperson of the new entity, MPAMOT, which has the potential to become a beacon for women in an industry that continues to be male dominated.

Another Tutu Fellow, Kunyalala Maphisa,  was the Lead Advisor on the transaction. Kunya is a 2006 Tutu Fellow and the Principal Partner at Brighton Wealth as well as the President of the Black Women's Association of South Africa, BWASA.

It is clear that we are living in exceptional and unprecedented times. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our ways of working and interacting and, naturally, AFLI has also been impacted. This post provides some sense of the impact of the pandemic and its implications on the Tutu Fellowship Programme.

When the effects of the pandemic were starting to be felt in March 2020, we had just completed the process of selecting our 2020 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Associates. We carried the news of that announcement here in our News.

Two Tutu Fellows are featured extensively in an article in TechCabal by Eghosa Omoigui, the managing partner at EchoVC Partners.  The article, titled Nudges and shoves : Tackling venture capital bias in Africa, deals with how historic inequalities are impacting venture capital investment in Africa.  The two Fellows mentioned extensively in the piece are Swaady Martin, a 2002 Fellow, and Ada Osakwe, who was in the Class of 2014. 

Eghosa begins his piece by offering an explanation of how prosperity happens, then qualifies it by saying that unfortunately, economics cannot presume rational actors.  The playing field, he says, is skewed, and this impacts how investors pattern match when making decisions on where to invest.

Two Tutu Fellows have been named to this year’s 100 Most Reputable Africans by Reputation Poll International. The two are 2008 Fellow, Elsie Kanza, and 2010 Fellow and AFLI CEO, Jackie Chimhanzi.  The annual Poll lists 100 Africans who are celebrated for their good governance, leadership, and a range of other criteria. 

The two Fellows are joined by a range of luminaries that include two African presidents and a number of policymakers. The selection criteria are integrity, visibility and impact.

2013 Tutu Fellow January Makamba has written a moving tribute for the late Tanzanian President, Mzee Mkapa, who died in July 2020. The tribute is a heartfelt and poetic portrait of a graceful leader, and the leadership he inspired in January and many others. Poignantly, he writes that, “Mkapa taught me that prominence is good when it comes to you, not when you seek it.”

January Makamba is a political leader, a former cabinet minister, and a Member of Parliament for the Bumbuli constituency. 

2019 Tutu Fellow Sangu Delle's  company has opened a new Rabito Clinic in Accra, Ghana.  Sangu's company, Africa Health Holdings, opened the clinic in East Legon in July. 

The services the clinic will provide include general medicine, dermatology, urology, gynecology, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy.  Rabito Clinic’s main area of practice is in dermatology, offering a wide range of treatments for patients with skin problems, including acne, autoimmune and connective tissue disease, HIV-related skin disorders, moles, melanoma surveillance, pigmentation disorders, wound and ulcer care, and more.

2016 Archbishop Tutu Fellow Dorothy Ghettuba has been interviewed by CNN on how she is growing streaming viewership in Africa and bringing more African stories to the lineup.  Film and television productions worldwide have been negatively impacted by COVID-19, but the Kenyan Netflix executive has said that she is using this time to find the best stories, to make the best use of the interruption.

At the same time, for international streaming giant Netflix, lockdowns have translated into nearly 16 million new paid subscribers in the first quarter of 2020 alone, followed by another 10 million during the second quarter. 

2014 Tutu Fellow Sello Hatang - the CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation - secured the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, to deliver the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on the theme: Tackling the inequality pandemic: A new social contract for a new era. 

Hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation in partnership with the UN, the event took place virtually on 18 July 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lecture was, for the first time, an online-only event, delivered at the UN headquarters in New York City.

Adejuwon Jude Feranmi Kolawole - known as JFK - has released his book, Lead the People. Jude is one of the Project Pakati Change Makers working on Youth inclusion in Africa. He is the Founder of the Raising New Voices Initiative and was formerly Executive Director of ToBuildANation, a citizen’s movement working towards political reforms in Nigeria with members in more than 25 states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He says that the book is meant to inspire and provide "clear-cut direction for any young leader who wants to see change happen in any community and in any country in the world." Lead the People was written to share strategies and tactics on how to become the leader that our world needs, with the capacity to influence change towards a positive direction.

The Tutu Fellows relish the time to connect with one another beyond the obvious connections through sector-related and work orientated opportunities and collaborations. While these are powerful ways for the network to deepen our impact across the continent and sharpen our understanding and nuances of each country, it is the building of relationships that glue the Fellows together.

Friday 29th June was a powerful and much-needed time for Fellows to connect, reflect and communicate about our experiences during the Covid 19 pandemic. It was led by 2006 Tutu Fellow Judy Malan, who facilitated a session to enable us to reflect on how we have responded to lockdown, both personally and as a leader. She touched on the different emotions we might have been processing, those of fear, hope and optimism as well as natural patterns we might default too - pessimist, optimist or realist.