News
The latest news from the African Leadership Institute and its Fellows. AFLI Fellows are leaders and change-makers, so this section has a lot of news. All text in all of the posts is fully searchable.

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2013 Tutu Fellow Ifeoma Malo has been awarded the Power Industry Leader of the Year at the prestigious Nigerian African Power, Energy and Water Industry Awards.
Ify is the Nigerian Campaign Director for Power for All, a global decentralized renewable campaign organization. She is also the founder and CEO of Clean Tech Hub and the Energy Innovation Center in Abuja. She was the immediate past Senior Policy Adviser on Energy Policies, Regulations and Partnerships to the Minister of Power in Nigeria and advised on the policy direction for large-scale grid-connected and off-grid power.

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Two Tutu Fellows, Lai Yahaya and Moji Rhodes, have been appointed as Special Advisors to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Lai is a 2009 Fellow and Moji a 2014 Fellow.
Lai was appointed as a Senior Special Advisor to the President handling Strategy and Planning, while Moji was appointed as a Special Advisor handling Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs. Their appointments were announced in August 2020.
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The governance committee of African Risk Capacity Limited has appointed 2014 Tutu Fellow Ladé Araba to join its Board of Directors. Ladé is the Managing Director for Africa at Convergence Finance. She is also the Co-Founder and President of the Visiola Foundation, which empowers African girls and young women through education, training, and mentoring in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Also appointed to the board was Sarata Kone-Thiam.
African Risk Capacity (ARC) is a specialized agency of the African Union that was established to help African governments improve their capacities to better plan, prepare, and respond to extreme weather events and natural disasters.
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Investec’s Women Behind the Mask initiative is a series of robust conversations which showcases women making a difference, and how women can help other women to move South Africa forward. In this second edition of the webcast series, 2016 Fellow Cumesh Moodliar, who is the Head of Private Banking at Investec, chaired a panel of women who are leaders in banking and financial markets. They discussed the impact that women in leadership had had on decisions made during lockdown for COVID-19.
The panel comprised Fundi Tshazibana, the Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank; Tertia Jacobs, a Treasury Economist at Investec Bank SA; Leila Fourie, the Group CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange; Rene van Zyl, a Tax & Fiduciary Specialist at Investec Wealth & Investment; and Ruth Leas, the CEO of Investec Bank UK.
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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.
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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.
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Several Tutu Leadership Programme alumni have been named in this year’s 100 Most Influential African Women list, which is published annually by Avance Media. They are Elsie Kanza, Ndidi Nwuneli, and Mimi Kalinda.
The prestigious listing is presented as a ranking of the 100 most influential African women, providing a summary of women who have climbed the corporate ladder, started their own businesses, or have been at the forefront of decision-making both locally and internationally. The criteria for selection include excellence in leadership and performance, personal accomplishments, commitment to sharing knowledge, breaking the status quo, and being an accomplished African woman. The listing was released in August, to coincide with Women's Month.
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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.
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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 Leadership Fellowship .
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.
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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.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the world and has also impacted AFLI. Due to the risk to participants as well as the logistical impact on travel and quarantines, the AFLI COVID-19 Board Subcommittee has decided to postpone the Class of 2020 to 2021. AFLI will also not open the nomination process in October 2020 for 2021, and will continue to monitor the pandemic.
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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 2012 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.
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2018 Tutu Fellow Jean-Guy Afrika has been appointed as the Chief Regional Funds Co-ordinator at the African Development Bank. In this role, he is responsible for the African Trade Fund’s (AfTRA) strategic planning and its overall management. This includes the monitoring and reporting of the operational performance of the Fund.
Jean-Guy is a public policy expert with deep specialization in trade, regional integration, and strategic planning and execution at the African Development Bank. He has coordinated efforts to develop two of the Bank’s most pioneering policy/analytical instruments - the Africa Regional Integration Index; and the Visa Openness Index.
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2019 Tutu Fellow Ronak Golpaldas examines the opportunities the global pandemic has presented the African continent in an article for African Business. He goes on to unpack four areas that present the greatest opportunities, namely, in healthcare, public-private collaboration, economic diversification; and regional cooperation.
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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.
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- Two Fellows named in 2020’s List of 100 Most Reputable Africans
- COVID-19 is accelerating multilateralism in Africa
- Fellow opens new medical clinic in Accra
- UN Secretary General delivers Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture
- Amplifying Africa's creative potential and telling its stories
- Pakati Change Maker Jude Feranmi Adejuwon releases Lead the People
- Sithembumenzi Vuma an Investment Director at UK Development institution
- Fellows connect, reflect and support each other during COVID-19
- Tutu Fellow appointed to UCT Council
- Fellow delivers convocation address, becoming the first African to do so