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: Linda Kasonde
- Category: News
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I was recently asked to give remarks at a Media Institute of Southern Africa event on the need to protect the social media space from political interference. I began to think about why the media, particularly social media, is so important and what its impact has been on the world. The media is called the Fourth Estate because it provides checks and balances on government. Traditionally those checks and balances are provided through spoken or written word. It was the writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton who coined the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” or, as Mark Twain put it, “never fight with people who buy ink by the barrel”.
The modern-day advent of the internet and the smart phone has made social media a phenomenon. We only have to think of how social media initiated the Arab Spring, mainstreamed the #BlackLivesMatter movement, or even much closer to home, ended #Lintonlies to see just how powerful it can be.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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2013 Tutu Fellow Nuradin Osman has been promoted to Vice President and General Manager for Africa at AGCO, the third-largest global manufacturer and distributor of agricultural equipment. His promotion is part of a restructuring at the company to realign its regional structure with its on-the-ground presence in Africa as well as to further expand the company's operations on the continent.
Osman's steady rise in the ranks belies his difficult beginning. A Somali, Osman's family lost everything twice due to famine and civil war, prompting him to walk across his country and through Ethiopia and Kenya before arriving in Holland in 1992 aged 17. See video below.
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- Written by: Linda Kasonde
- Category: News
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With a woman’s ambition to lead comes the risk of being undermined, maligned, side-lined or even physically attacked, simply because women are still viewed as the weaker sex. This year, I was elected as the first female President of the Law Association of Zambia in the 53-year history of the organisation and its predecessor the Law Society of Zambia. Having been in office since May this year, I now concur with the late, great “philosopher” David Bowie who jokingly said, “Don’t be the first, be the second”. On a serious note, being a relatively young female leader in a patriarchal society is fraught with challenges; the first of which is actually getting into office.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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2015 Tutu Fellow Kopano Matlwa is releasing her third novel, titled Period Pain. Matlwa, who is a medical doctor, is the author of Coconut, which sold 25,000 copies. The award-winning novel established her as one of South Africa's most vibrant young writers. It also garnered a European Union Literary Award in 2007. She followed it up with Spilt Milk, which won the Wole Soyinka Prize for literature in 2010.
Period Pain is about the heartache and confusion experienced by so many South Africans facing the difficulties of xenophobia, rape, corruption and crime set against the backdrop of the nation's ailing public health system.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
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2007 Tutu Fellow Edward Mabaya has been elected president of the African Association of Agricultural Economists at the association’s fifth triennial conference at the U.N. Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mabaya is the associate director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development and a senior research associate at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. His research and outreach work focuses on agricultural development and food security in Africa.
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- Written by: Jackie Chimhanzi PhD
- Category: News
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AFLI’s inaugural leadership workshops were held in 2006. 2016 is, therefore, a significant year for AFLI! I have become the CEO of AFLI at a time when the Institute has commemorated its 10th anniversary and celebrates its 11th class of young African leaders – an opportune time to pause and reflect on what AFLI has achieved but, more importantly, what lies ahead and what AFLI can still achieve. It is also a time to thank our wonderful sponsors for making this happen over these 11 years – notably Investec, GSK, Rio Tinto, Centum, AGCO, and our Chairmen, Sean Lance and Strive Masiyiwa for their individual donations.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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2012 Tutu Fellow Dr. Andrew Mude has won the 2016 Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application. He and his team are also receiving a USAID award for scientific excellence. The recognition is for their work developing the innovative use of satellite technology and community outreach to develop livestock insurance for vulnerable herding communities in the Horn of Africa. The program uses satellite data to help protect livestock herding communities in the Horn from the devastating effects of drought.
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- Written by: Peter Wilson
- Category: News
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The Tutu Leadership Fellowship requires each participant to write an essay on leadership in Africa. The quality of submissions is very high as demonstrated by this challenging and thought provoking piece by 2016 Fellow Jon Kornik, where he posits that we are decades too late for leading by looking in the rear view mirror when faced with a dynamic and disrupted future. New values, new mindsets and approaches are needed in leaders for positive outcomes for the people of Africa.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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A 2016 Tutu Fellow,Success Masra, recently was invited to the White House as part of a group of young leaders. It followed the launch of a compilation book on Nelson Mandela for which he was the lead author. The book, originally published in French, is titled Les Héritiers de Madiba (The Rainbow Heirs of Madiba). From there, Masra went on to Paris to defend his PhD on the role of development financial institutions in promoting renewable energy.
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- Written by: Sello Hatang
- Category: News
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It has been one year since students shook up the establishment and called for "fees to fall", and now we find ourselves once again facing a violent confrontation between students, the university establishment and the government.
Underpinning this violence and anger has been the inequality and lack of capacity of the state to provide financial resources and opportunities.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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2019 Tutu Fellow Ronak Gopaldas has delivered a powerful talk about thinking beyond the binaries and embracing Africa’s diversity. He delivered the talk in Cape Town in 2016. At the time, Ronak was the Head of Country Risk at Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) in Johannesburg, where he managed a team of analysts who provide the firm with in-depth analysis of economic, political, security and operational dynamics across sub-Saharan Africa.
In his talk he describes his job as a political economist as trying to predict the future without a crystal ball. Ronak has travelled extensively across Africa to identify key country themes and trends, which in addition to a network of contacts and resources, help inform the qualitative and quantitative research the team produces, with the aim of guiding RMB’s strategic investment decisions.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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South Africa has seen a series of protests at a girls' school prompted by enforcement of the dress code, which impacted students who wanted to be able to wear afro hairstyles. In a piece for the BBC, Nigerian novelist and writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani questions whether a South African school's hair rules really were racist.
She recalled her days as a student at one of Nigeria's most prestigious boarding schools for girls where rules were rigidly enforced and falling foul of them could result in a shaven head.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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James Mwangi, the Executive Director of The Dalberg Group, says that small enterprise - if it is given the support it needs - has the power to create growth and prosperity for Africa. The 2009 Tutu Fellow said that elements like providing early access to small amounts of capital and mentorship could unlock the potential of entrepreneurship. Innovative solutions to problems facing developing countries were likely to emerge with this kind of support.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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Tutu Fellow Ifeoma Malo was interviewed by This Day Live on her views on renewable energy in a country with a chronic energy shortage. Malo is a former senior policy advisor to the Nigerian government on energy and is now active in advocacy for renewable energy use in countries such as her own and others facing the challenge of meeting growing energy demands. She makes the case that renewable energy is the best solution to Nigeria's struggle to meet its energy needs.
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- Written by: Gbenga Sesan
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In a piece I wrote on my blog, I made the point that the visit by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Nigeria is a big deal. He drew attention to the importance of technology startups, helped validate the country's technology ecosystem, and held high-level meetings with the Nigerian government. Zuckerberg also controls the largest pool of private data in the world of 1.71 billion active users and 1.5 billion mobile users - which is more than the entire population of China or India. His visit has important lessons that must not be lost.
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- New CEO for AFLI
- 2016 Tutu Leadership Fellowship ends with an amazing final workshop in Oxford
- Fellow's juice shop demolished
- 2016 Fellows offer 'Vote of Thanks'
- Tutu Fellow wrestling for peace in South Sudan
- Teenage girls impress US Secretary of State with STEM skills
- Tutu Fellow wins 'Change Agent' tech award
- Fellow joins Presidential energy task team for Africa
- Tutu Fellow starts top co-worker space
- Open letter to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe
