Latest News

2016 Tutu Fellow Peter Biar Ajak had his day in court today in Juba, South Sudan, after being detained for almost a year.  He was arrested on 28 July 2018, allegedly for treason.  However, the treason charges were thrown out by a court in April.

In court today, he was sentenced to two years for allegedly disturbing the peace and violence for giving interviews to foreign media that were critical of the government.  His lawyer is contesting the sentence as freedom of speech is constitutionally protected in South Sudan. His term was backdated to the day he was detained, so he still faces a year in prison for his peace activism.

To Peter, Sean, Jacob, Jackie, Jessica, Charles, Lord Hacking, Ronnie, Karen, Allen, and the rest of the faculty:

You called upon us to embark on a journey into the realm of human possibilities. In this short yet intense adventure, we stopped at many stations. We traversed the rich and complex jungles of leadership, negotiating between the charismatic and the inspirational, and wondered whether something “straight” would come out of the “crooked timber of humanity”. We encountered, with thoughts raised high, the wicked problems of how to effect change at the continent, pondered over “Africa’s critical choices”, and explored opportunities to use trade to bring prosperity to our continent.

The first workshop of the 2019 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Programme was held at the Mont Fleur Conference Centre from the 27th April to the 4th of May, 2019. The 23 Fellowship candidates came from some 250 nominees of outstanding excellence from over 30 African countries, and represented 11 different African countries - Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Gabon, Mali, South Africa, the Gambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Madagascar.

It was a memorable time of learning, introspection, forging deep relationships with peers and lots of laughter!

The African Leadership Institute has a very strong cohort of emerging African leaders for the prestigious Tutu Leadership Fellowship for 2019. Amongst nearly 250 nominees of outstanding quality from more than 30 African countries, 23 of Africa’s highest potential young leaders were selected to take part in the programme. Including the candidates nominated by our sponsoring organisations, the candidates represent 12 different African countries, ranging in age 25 to 39 years of age, and span several industries. The selected candidates demonstrate the incredible wealth and breadth of leadership talent that exists in Africa’s youth.

The biographies of the 2019 candidates follow:

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa extended an invitation to 2013 Fellow and human rights activist Catherine Constantinides to attend the SADC Saharawi Summit in South Africa in March 2019. Catherine has for years worked on behalf of the Saharawi, who live in territory occupied illegally by Morocco. 

The SADC Solidarity Conference with the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic started with a call for unity to ensure the right to freedom and self-determination of the people of the Western Sahara. It was attended by several heads of state, who took a stand for the Saharawi and expressed their support for decolonisation of the region and self-determination for Western Sahara on the basis of the values and principles that have guided the quest for independence throughout Africa.

2006 Fellow Palesa Kadi has been appointed to chair the ICASA hearings on sport broadcasting rights. Palesa is a media activist, researcher and has worked as a regulator in the broadcasting and telecommunications space, where she serves as an ICASA councillor. ICASA is South Africa's broadcast regulator. 

The hearings - and issue - is politically sensitive, as big-draw sport is currently mainly broadcast on expensive pay channels, locking out many ordinary South Africans from being able to watch sport on free-to-air TV.

A piece I first began drafting when I served as an Ibrahim Leadership Fellow is appearing in the print edition of Africa Policy Journal on pan-African migration.  Titled How Africa Can Adopt a Pan-African Migration and Development Agenda, AFLI has permission to share ahead of the journal's appearance, the abstract of the piece. 

It looks at the potential upsides to allowing intra-African migration, which is largely seen in a negative light, if the continent adopted constructive policies around migration for development.  Currently Africa has restrictive policies on migration.

Wakanda is a fictional East African paradise made famous by the 2018 blockbuster film ‘Black Panther’. It is a well-developed, high-tech, highly functional country inhabited by warriors who possess mystical powers through a special substance only found in Wakanda called vibranium. Wakanda is a powerful and well-governed country. It is a proud nation which has its own official African language. As a result, it has garnered the respect of countries far outside of its borders.

Back on the real African continent, one struggles to find a country that matches the description of Wakanda in all respects. If anything, there is a growing instability around the continent that is unsettling.

The African Leadership Institute was founded by Sean Lance and myself – Peter Wilson. Sean is a very successful South African businessman, now retired and living in Plettenberg Bay. I had known Sean for many years as a fierce competitor on the sports field, and as we knew each other’s capabilities, Sean contracted me to do some scenario-based strategy consulting work for his team when he was Chief Operating Officer and a Board member of Glaxo-Wellcome in London – and scheduled to become CEO of the second biggest company by market capitalisation on the London Stock Exchange. A few weeks before he was due to become CEO he disagreed with the Board over the proposed merger with SmithKlineBeecham and thus left Glaxo to become CEO and ultimately Chairman of Chiron, a big-four biotechnology company based in San Francisco. Having established a working relationship at Glaxo, when he moved he asked me to help him restructure the strategy of this fast-growing company. Sean and I worked closely on this task for five years, and during this time, we often spoke after hours about what we could do to give back to the continent of our heritage. Both of us have deep roots in Africa going back about 200 years.

Statement by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellows on the unrest in Zimbabwe
17th January 2019

The Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellows of the African Leadership Institute are a diverse group of civic, political and business leaders from 40 African countries, who are concerned with the governance and development of the African continent. We, the Tutu Fellows, are alarmed by the growing unrest in Zimbabwe and, most worryingly, by the Zimbabwean government’s reaction to it. The unrest by ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe is in response to a hike in the fuel price in Zimbabwe, which is now the most expensive in the region.

2008 Tutu Fellow Bibi Bakare-Yusuf has won the 2018 African Literary Person of the Year award from Brittle Paper. 

The Brittle Paper Award recognizes individuals who work behind the scenes to hold up the African literary establishment in the given year.  Bibi Bakare-Yusuf was recognised for her long service and leadership in publishing as well as her disruptive approach.  It celebrates a literary personality who has taken the lead in challenging and expanding assumptions about what it means to be an African creative. Brittle Paper says that it recognizes individuals for this award who explore Africa as a powerful idea that does not restrain creativity but inspires the most boundary-pushing and revolutionary work.

Earlier this year, AFLI carried a piece on how 2017 Tutu Fellow Yap Boum has been engaged in the battle against Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Yap is a microbiologist and epidemiologist with Epicentre Africa, an association created in the 80's by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) that set up a vaccine trial protocol with the Congolese government using an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck to be given selectively to those most likely to have had contact with a person carrying the disease.  Trial protocols are required for approval for use of experimental drugs. Since then, the battle against the outbreak has been in the news around the planet.

Yap told us as the year draws to a close that the battle continues and that it is serious.  He said that in less than six months, the DRC has seen two unrelated Ebola outbreaks.

A business school agricultural management program in Kenya started by two Tutu Fellows has reached another milestone. The agribusiness program was hatched by 2013 Fellow Nuradin Osman and 2015 Fellow Martin Mbaya at the 10-year celebration of AFLI in 2016.   The program seeks to be scalable and to teach young people to go into farming professionally, provide support for the African agricultural sector, and help farmers do more with less.  Students are now learning a range of hands-on skills and transitioning into work-placements. 

The pilot programme was launched towards the end of last year and more can be read about it here in AFLI News (see below).