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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- Written by: Robtel Neajai Pailey
- Category: News
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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.
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- Written by: Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa
- Category: News
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Refugees have long been excluded from financial services, leaving them struggling to integrate into host economies. But new technologies have made the lack of an identity card, loan collateral, or a fixed address irrelevant, and the world's displaced people may be only the first to benefit.
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- Written by: Katebe Monica Musonda
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As a woman CEO in the manufacturing sector, it’s been a lonely journey to say the least. When I started Java Foods, I didn’t realise how difficult it was going to be. I looked around me and most of the businesses were either multinationals or local businesses all run by MEN. At first, I thought it wasn’t an issue, after all, I was a maverick. But as months rolled on, I realized that I was in fact the odd one out.
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- Written by: Writer
- Category: News
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To develop and roll out projects Pakati has under way, AFLI has selected a number of ChangeLeads and ChangeMakers. It selected four ChangeLeads and 150 ChangeMakers for the Youth Representation Inclusion Project; and three ChangeLeads and 100 ChangeMakers for the Portal of African Youth-Led and Youth-Serving Organizations project.
The Project Pakati digital platform on Workplace by Facebook has gone live and they are now engaging in developing and co-creating solutions with other young leaders from across the continent. Project Pakati is pleased to announce the ChangeLeads who have committed to driving these two projects. Their profiles follow:
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- Written by: Writer
- Category: News
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Governance for AFLI's Pakati Project is provided by a Youth Advisory Board. As stated in the Board terms of reference, the position of co-chair is valid for a period of six months only. Thereafter, the board co-chairs together with the secretariat (AFLI) are required to vote in a new set of co-chairs. This rotational arrangement has been put in place to allow the young leaders of the youth advisory board to be exposed to the experience of chairing a board and to leverage the experience for their growth and development. The co-chairs will support each other to achieve the objectives of the project and it is up to them to decide how they will collaborate and delegate tasks between themselves.
The newly elected board co-chairs, Maudo Jallow and Wadi Ben-Hirki, commenced their term in February 2019 replacing Raphael Obonyo and Rumbi Gunduza.
Maudo Jallow
Maudo Jallow The Gambia Maudo Jallow is the founder of New Nation – a youth-driven initiative that seeks to advocate for the prioritisation of youth development and structural transformation in The Gambia.
He currently works with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) as an International Development Expert. Before that, Maudo worked with the United Nations Research Institute as part of the Social Policy & Development research team, between September and December 2017. He is also a contributor and writer for Future Africa Forum, which is an organization that exists to increase the voice and participation of young African people in policymaking, dialogue and implementation, as well as a platform for coming up with policies and agendas that advance the development of the African continent.
In the recent past, Maudo worked for the LSE Africa Summit as a Co-Director, and Press TV UK as a Contributor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in International Business with French and Economics and a Master's degree in African Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Wadi Ben-Hirki
Wadi Ben-Hirki is a development worker, writer, and public speaker. She is the Founder of Wadi Ben-Hirki Foundation, a registered non- profit organization in Nigeria. She is a strong believer of equity and justice. She believes everyone deserves a fighting chance and we are humans first before anything else so, we should treat one another with love and care.
Wadi holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Covenant University, Nigeria. She has been trained by the Satyagraha Institute on non-violence, peace building and conflict resolution, Youth Organizing School on policy advocacy & civic engagement. She currently sits on the African Leadership Institute Youth Advisory Board and serves as a Country Representative for the Chatham House Common Futures Conversations. Wadi is a ONE Champion and an Ashoka change maker. In 2017, she was the focal point for Canada High Commission’s #SheCANLead campaign in Nigeria. In 2016, she participated in the Africa Union’s Regional Consultation on Human Rights with a major focus on Women’s Rights. Wadi was a Youth Delegate at the Global Partnership for Education Financing Conference 2018 and served as a Special Guest on education & skills for the 21st century at the Y20 Summit 2018. She also participated in the 2018 United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Youth Leaders’ Exchange with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Wadi was one of the recipients of the World Youth Forum Award 2018 which was presented by H.E President AbdelFattah El-Sisi (President of Egypt). She was enlisted as one of the 100 Most Influential Young Africans in 2018. Some of her awards include Her Network Woman of the Future Award 2017, The Ebony Life TV Sisterhood Advocate and People’s Choice of the Year Awards 2017, Top 10 young people in Africa working towards achieving Gender Justice and Reconciliation Award and Civil Society Award 2017.
Wadi has been nominated on several occasions and has volunteered for a couple of organizations that focus on education, gender equality and peace. Her voice has been heard on Aljazeera, BBC, Agence-France Presse and La Nacion Etc.
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- Written by: Charles Sidambe
- Category: News
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2013 Tutu Fellow Catherine Constantinides headed out for the 2019 Sahara Marathon, which took place on the 26th February in the Sahara Desert. The South African Earth Warrior and social justice activist is running a marathon that's a shorter than the path facing the Saharawi people to freedom.
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- Written by: Charles Sidambe
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2010 Tutu Fellow, academic, activist and author Robtel Neajai Pailey PhD has released her second book, Jaadeh!, the highly-anticipated sequel to her previous book, Gbagba, the anti-corruption children's book that has transformed elementary classrooms in Liberia.
In December 2018, Robtel also received an international anti-corruption excellence award for both books at a ceremony in Putrajaya, Malaysia for her work in shining light on corruption.
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- Written by: Linda Kasonde
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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.
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- Written by: Peter Wilson
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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.
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- Written by: Writer
- Category: News
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For a continent that is the youngest in the world, young Africans are conspicuous by their absence at key deliberations that affect their futures. Because of this, Project Pakati is calling for ChangeMakers and ChangeLeads to work on a youth representation project.
There seems to be an understanding that youth are significant dividends of the continent’s population and that they need to be included in decision-making processes in various spaces, yet this is not happening. By not including them in decision-making processes, countries lose a crucial resource base. Young people can contribute a great deal through their perspectives and experiences; no governance structure can be truly successful without them.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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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.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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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.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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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.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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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).
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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2009 Tutu Fellow Dr Julie Makani is on the 2018 list of the 100 Most Influential Africans compiled annually by New African Magazine. She joins other Fellows in previous years who have been selected for this prestigious list. For years, she has been steadily working towards improving outcomes for people born with sickle-cell anaemia, a condition that disproportionately affects Africans, with more than 210 thousand children in Africa born each year with it.
She is a Principal Investigator in Clinical Medicine at Oxford University and has researched the genomics of the disease to better understand the genetic and environmental factors affecting sickle-cell disease (SCD).
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- Fellow appointed to UN digital task force
- Book examines Africa's continental development institutions
- Profitable small farmer outgrower program
- When Life Ends In Death: The Face of Maternal and Infant Mortality in Zambia
- Fellow wins Anti-Corruption Award
- Fellow appointed to senior banking position in South Africa
- Why do we blame women for rape?
- Panel discussion at Report launch on youth leadership
- Harnessing the power of collective action
- Four Fellows selected for Choiseul Africa 2018 list