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2019 Tutu Fellow Robin Miller has been appointed to serve on the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on the New Agenda for Work, Wages and Job Creation.  The council considers what the new pathways are to creating more and better jobs in the new economy. The work of the council is possibly more relevant than ever when seen against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis that has led to significant economic and social disruption with sharp increases in unemployment and underemployment and radical changes in how work is done. This disruption could accelerate previous trends towards the displacement of workers through automation and digitalization – possibly leading to a jobless recovery – without proactive efforts by governments, business and workers.

Robin is a Partner and founding member of Dalberg’s Africa Team and has been recognized as a thought leader and expert on the topic of digital transformation on a range of global platforms, including the BBC, Financial Times, and the World Economic Forum.

In October 2020, the African Union Youth Envoy, Aya Chebbi, had an audience with the Namibian President, Hage Geingob, and spoke at the opening of the South Sudan National Dialogue, where the tenets and recommendations of the report: Greater Inclusion of African Youth in Public Service and Governance were put forward.

Copies of the report have also been distributed to the AU Commission Chairperson Mousa Faki and the 55 African Union member states represented in Addis Ababa. Copies were also shared with the Ambassadors to the AU from Algeria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa.

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.

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.

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 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Fellowship Programme.

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.

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 2002 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.