Latest News

Financing Alliance for Health - the company 2019 Fellow Dr Angela Gichaga leads - has developed a seven part series of courses on financing in public health. Financing Alliance serves government Ministries of Health and Ministries of Finance, globally, in building resilient and sustainably-financed health systems. At a time when the global coronavirus pandemic is affecting people everywhere, financing stretched public health systems is a hot topic, so the timing of the programme is fortuitous.

The newly-developed Financing Community Health Programs for Scale and Sustainability course presents an in-depth exploration of the financing value chain needed to understand resource needs as well as to mobilize resources for community health.

In October 2020, two Nigerian Tutu Fellows, Akin Oyebode and Serah Ugbabe, co-hosted a Zoom discussion, entitled, Let’s Run for Office: Spotlight on Local Government Chairman. The guest speaker for the event was Folarin Gbadebo-Smith PhD, the Director General for the Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research as well as the Local Government Chairman for Lagos from 2003- 2007.

In the Zoom discussion, Folarin shared his history, personal anecedotes, and insights into working and rising through local governance in Nigeria.

2011 Tutu Fellow Charles Washoma has been appointed as Vice President of International Affiliated Institutes at the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII). The appointment was made on 26 October 2020.

The CII is the largest professional body operating in the insurance and financial services market and has membership of over 129,000. Governments, regulators and employers see the organisation as an important source of thought leadership, expertise and best practice.

The following is the full text of an open letter from Nigerian Tutu Fellows to President Muhammadu Buhari on the violent treatment by Nigerian security forces of #EndSARS protestors.

Open Letter to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

October 21, 2020

President Buhari,

You appealed to Nigerians to give you a mandate in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

2010 Fellow Edwin Macharia has been appointed as a member of the Nature Conservancy global Board of Directors. He was elected to his first three-year term, which started on October 15, 2020. The Nature Conservancy is a global environmental non-profit working to create a world where people and nature can thrive. The NGO impacts conservation positively in 79 countries and territories across six continents.

Edwin Macharia is Dalberg Advisors’ Global Managing Partner. In this role, he sets Dalberg’s direction and oversees activities across offices worldwide.  “As The Nature Conservancy continues our mission to tackle some of the world’s biggest environmental challenges with creative, bold, scientifically-based, and scalable solutions, we need creative, bold, and strategic thinkers like John, Michelle, and Edwin to help us accomplish our goals,” said Jennifer Morris, The Nature Conservancy’s CEO.

2014 Tutu Fellow Aua Baldé has been appointed to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances by the Human Rights Council. The appointment was made during its 54th session, in October 2020.

The main goal of the Working Group is to assist families of missing people to discover their fate or whereabouts, and act as a channel of communication between the families of victims and governments.

The UN African States for the Working Group, established in 1980, was the first thematic mechanism created under the United Nations Human Rights Program to address specific violations of human rights of a particularly serious nature, practiced worldwide.

2006 Tutu Fellow Thulane Ngele PhD has been appointed as the General Manager People Relations at Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, where his role has been described as delivering people relations solutions that are grounded on theoretical concepts, fuelled by data and led by insights.  Thulane was appointed on 1 October 2020. Eskom is the largest producer of electricity in Africa.

Prior to this appointment, he was Head of Employment Relations and Employment Equity & People Governance and Assurance at Absa Group Limited. On a part-time basis, he pursues his love for education through supervising and marking MBA dissertations at Milpark Business School. 

2006 Tutu Fellow Aidan Eyakuze has been elected as Civil Society Co-Chair of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Aidan is the Executive Director of the policy and civil society nonprofit, Twaweza, in Tanzania.  Twaweza works to demonstrate how citizens can come together to collectively address their problems and make government work better for them.

His term as Lead Co-Chair alongside the government of Italy will begin next year.  Until then, and in collaboration with the government of Italy, he will support the new Lead Co-Chair, Maria Baron, the Executive Director of Directorio Legislativo, and the government of South Korea, to advance the work of the Open Government partnership.

The African Leadership Institute in South Africa (AFLI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Trevor Manuel as Chairman, following the end of Ronnie Ntuli’s tenure after three years of service during which time he very successfully restructured the Institute’s governance and prepared for a seamless transition as the Founders stepped back.

The African Leadership Institute was founded in 2003 by Sean Lance and Peter Wilson and is committed to nurturing the leadership capabilities of Africa's highest potential young leaders in the age range 25-39.  It is the vision of the Founders that this values-based network of visionary, strategic, self-aware and ethical African leaders become the catalysts for change and the transformation of Africa. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is the Patron of the Institute and the flagship offering is the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Programme which is delivered in partnership with Oxford University.

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.”

2019 Tutu Fellow Marcia Ashong, the founder and Executive Director of TheBoardroom Africa, has partnered with the Ghana Stock Exchange on a new report assessing progress on gender diversity across the region.  The report is titled Board Diversity Index, Ghana 2020 Edition. The index tracks the number of listed boards by country and identifies all board seats filled by women.  It also monitors the number of women in chair and other executive positions. 

Research to date covers publicly listed boards across 11 African countries, and now includes Ghana.

2019 Tutu Fellow Samson Itodo has been appointed by the Nigerian government as a member of the national steering committee for the new Nigerian development plan, Agenda 2050. Itodo is the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, a community of change-makers focused on building sustainable democracies in Africa anchored on the principles of inclusion, justice, accountability and constitutionalism.

He convened the Not Too Young To Run movement that led the successful advocacy for the reduction of age limits for running for public office in the Nigerian constitution. The campaign was adopted by the United Nations, African Union and ECOWAS as a global campaign.

2007 Tutu Fellow Hassan Musa Usman has been appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Access Bank Plc, following the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Access Bank is a Nigerian multinational commercial bank, owned by Access Bank Group. Hassan brings his experience as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Aso Savings and Loans Plc to his board position, as well as other previous experience in this space.

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.

The global mobility technology multinational, Bombardier Transportation, has announced the appointment of 2019 Tutu Fellow Makgola Makololo as Managing Director for South Africa. In this role, she is responsible for Bombardier Transportation’s strategy, development and deployment in the country, with sustainable customer and partner relationships as priorities.

Makgola is an engineer with extensive management experience in large-scale organisations and has been listed as a leader in science and technology by a variety of publications. Globally, Bombardier has nearly 60,000 employees and manufactures planes and trains.