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.

- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
- Published:
The African Climate Foundation (ACF) has elected 2018 Tutu Fellow Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg PhD to their Advisory Council. She is the Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), which works towards inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for the African continent, by strengthening the production and dissemination of more gender-responsive agricultural research and innovation.
The ACF is the first African-led, strategic, climate-change, grant-making foundation on the continent.

- Hits: 66

- Written by: Super User
- Category: News
- Published:
2006 Tutu Fellow Kunyalala Maphisa has been appointed as an Independent Non-executive Director to the Board of PPC Cement and a Member of its Investment Committee and the Social, Ethics and Transformation Committee. The appointments were made as of the beginning of February 2021.
Kunyalala is co-founder and Principal Partner for Brighton Wealth Subsaharan, a South African based investment and advisory firm with a diversified investment portfolio. She is also the President of BWASA, the Business Women's Association of South Africa, the largest association of professionals and businesswomen in South Africa.
- Hits: 57

- Written by: Super User
- Category: News
- Published:
Dr Angela Gichaga - a 2019 Tutu Fellow - joined the PSI Board in January 2021. Population Services International (PSI) is a non-profit global health organization with programs targeting malaria, child survival, HIV, and reproductive health. It is based in Washington, DC; Nairobi; and Amsterdam and has been in existence for more than half a decade.
PSI says that while it is a nonprofit, it uses measurable business practices to build strong health systems in the private and public sector to save lives. It has more than 8,000 local experts in more than 50 countries with which it works.
- Hits: 76

- Written by: Writer
- Category: News
- Published:
African Business Magazine has published a thought piece by AFLI CEO Jackie Chimhanzi in which she argues why Africa needs greater representation by young leaders at the decision-making table. The magazine published it as part of a special report to the 2020 World Economic Forum summit in Davos.
In the piece, which was co-written by the Pakati Project Manager Monique Atouguia, they point out that it is important for young people to occupy key leadership positions, but not just any young people. It is the young people who have the energy, focus, intensity, risk appetite, passion and single-minded drive to deliver well-articulated burning visions. Young leaders need to be at the centre of power, where decisions are being made.
- Hits: 61

- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
- Published:
2014 Tutu Fellow Mokena Makeka was appointed Principal at Dalberg, and Director of the South Africa Office commencing January 2021. In his role, he will have a particular focus on the following areas: cities and urban development; the built environment and natural infrastructure; digital communities, innovation and entrepreneurship; transport and renewables; green livelihoods; forest economy; beyond smart cities and spatial and social transformation through design.
Dalberg Global Development Advisors is a strategy and policy advisory firm. Founded in 2001, it specialises in global development.
- Hits: 70

- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
- Published:
2008 Tutu Fellow Elsie Kanza has been selected for a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship, a program of the Robert Bosch Academy. With this Fellowship, the Robert Bosch Academy offers outstanding personalities from over the world a residency of several months in Berlin.
The residency provides Fellows with the intellectual and physical space to pursue individual research and outreach activities on future-oriented topics in an international context. The Fellowship enables them to engage and study beyond their normal professional commitments. The highly-individualized stays offer these Fellows the intellectual freedom to deal with a variety of topics and issues beyond their regular duties and obligations.
- Hits: 63

- Written by: Super User
- Category: News
- Published:
2008 Tutu Fellow Nitesh Dullabh has been appointed to serve as a director on the governing board of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP). The ISSP is the world's leading professional association of sustainability practitioners.
Nitesh is a global environmental, social and governance (ESG) and sustainabilty development goal (SDG) expert, and has over 20 years experience in facilitating Fortune 200 companies with their global expansion projects in developed and emerging markets.
- Hits: 68

- Written by: Super User
- Category: News
- Published:
2010 Tutu Fellow Lerato Mataboge delivered a TEDx Lyttleton Women Talk on the necessity and urgency for African countries to trade among themselves as a way to address economic challenges and recover from the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Titled, Why Intra-Africa Trade Matters, she says that African countries not only need to trade among themselves as a way to address economic challenges and undo colonial patterns of consumption and distribution, they need to begin doing so with a sense of urgency. This type of trade can play a key role in helping the continent recover from the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She begins her talk about vanilla, the bulk of which in the global market is grown in Madagascar. Madagascar exports it and when it comes back to the continent, it costs so much more. Africa trading away its resources must change, she says, and the continent must begin adding value before exports occur so as to retain the value at home.
- Hits: 54

- Written by: Super User
- Category: News
- Published:
2010 Tutu Fellow Robtel Neajai Pailey PhD has launched her monograph Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia. Robtel is an Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Robtel's book asks whether dual citizenship reproduces inequalities, using Liberia, Africa’s first black republic, as an extended case study. It is based on over 200 in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe and North America. The inaugural launch of the book was held in Monrovia at the University of Liberia on official publication day on 7 January.
- Hits: 66

- Written by: Super User
- Category: News
- Published:
CNN’s Inside Africa have profiled 2017 Tutu Fellow, Bosun Tijani, along with two other of Nigeria's tech entrepreneurs and innovators who are using technology to provide life-changing solutions to everyday problems. Bosun is the founder and CEO of CcHUB.
CNN says Nigeria has 90 tech hubs, the most on the continent. It said that in 2019, one report had found that start-ups in Nigeria had raised nearly $400 million, more than double the amount from the previous year. CNN went on to say that in recent years, Nigeria had become an incubator for some of the continent’s biggest start-ups.
- Hits: 84

- Written by: Peter Wilson
- Category: News
- Published:
In 2004, a group of young South Africans, selected for their acknowledged leadership potential, envisioned that by 2020, South Africa would be “An inclusive, prosperous and just society founded on ubuntu, equality and freedom, fostering creativity and allowing its people to realise their full potential.” This Vision formed the foundation of their preferred scenario – “All aboard the Dual Carriageway”. It was one of four scenarios, ranging from disastrous to optimal.
Their hope was that “a quarter of a century after its transition to democracy, it would be a South Africa that has significantly dealt with the legacy of underdevelopment, poverty, unemployment and inequality that it had inherited. They imagined a South Africa that will have proudly taken its place within the world community of nations, as an economic and political equal.” The group was facilitated by - and the final paper drafted by - Olubenga Adesida PhD, and myself.
- Hits: 63

- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
- Published:
A 2006 Tutu Fellow, Wendy Burgers, is leading research into reinfection of patients by COVID-19. She had noticed that globally, a handful of patients had reportedly been reinfected with COVID. She thought it was important to discover and understand how the immune system responds to the virus and whether it provides previously infected patients with a level of protection, should they be re-exposed to the virus. Wendy is a viral immunologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Medical Virology in the Department of Pathology in University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Faculty of Health Sciences. Wendy and her team are regularly sampling of a group of healthcare workers who have a high risk of exposure to the virus who had been infected with COVID-19. It also used a group of their peers who had not.
- Hits: 820

- Written by: Uzodinma Iweala
- Category: News
- Published:
Like many of you, I watched yesterday as rioters and terrorists desecrated the United States Capitol Building. I was not shocked. That such violent opposition to U.S. democratic institutions would manifest after years of sustained assault should not be shocking.
The images from January 6th should not be considered an anomaly. We should resist the urge to label such acts as un-American and we should not move too quickly towards an overused rhetoric of healing. If this country is to survive the next few years, let alone thrive, we will have to face the aspects of our American identity that make so many people feel it is acceptable to deny reality—the reality of election results, the reality of a pandemic, and the reality of deeply rooted racism that manifests in the care with which law enforcement treated (mostly) White men rampaging through the halls of the Capitol Building.
- Hits: 52

- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
- Published:
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science magazine has profiled 2019 Tutu Fellow, Prof Edwine Barasa, and his role in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya. He is the director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, a long-standing collaboration between Kenya and the United Kingdom, in Nairobi, Kenya, as well as being a Professor of Health Economics at the University of Oxford. Over the course of the pandemic, Edwine has worked with epidemiologists and advised Kenya’s Ministry of Health on how to allocate its limited resources.
- Hits: 807

- Written by: Norman Smit
- Category: News
- Published:
2006 Tutu Fellow Aidan Eyakuze is listed among The Agile 50: The World’s 50 Most Influential People Revolutionising Governance 2020, which lauds politicians, civil servants and entrepreneurs who are driving agility in governments around the world. The list recognises “both high-profile icons and shines light on the unsung heroes whose work is indispensable in transforming government to respond to rapid technological change.” Apolitical made the announcement at the end of 2020.
It is compiled by Apolitical, an organisation that equips public servants to better do their jobs through courses, information, events and networking. It says that government is critical to solving global challenges, but that public servants often lack access to the best solutions because good ideas are often siloed in country's cities or sometimes even departments, leading to a duplication of effort, wasted taxpayer money, and poorer services.
- Hits: 69
- Fellow appointed to international democracy institute's board
- Catherine Constantinides' account of her struggle with COVID-19
- Fellow to coordinate global programme against female genital mutilation
- Fellow appointed as Acting National Chair of the Youth Party in Nigeria
- Fellows contribute to the AfCFTA Futures Report on women and youth
- Sickle Cell consortium awarded 2020 Dr Lee Jong-Wook Memorial Prize for Public Health
- Fellow launches independent publishing house for children
- Fellow to serve on WEF's Global Future Council on Work, Wages and Job Creation
- Fellows feature on cover of Forbes Africa Special Edition on Private Equity
- Fellow pays tribute to the late former Ghanaian President JJ Rawlings
About AFLI
The African Leadership Institute (AFLI) is unique among leadership initiatives in that it focuses on building the capacity and capability of visionary and strategic leadership across the continent. Developing exceptional leaders representing all spheres of society, the Institute’s flagship programme is the prestigious Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship. Offering a multifaceted learning experience and run in partnership with Oxford University, it is awarded annually to 20-25 carefully chosen candidates, nominated from across Africa. Alumni of the African Leadership Institute form a dynamic network of Fellows passionately committed to the continent’s transformation, bridging the divide between nations and ensuring that Africa is set centre-stage in global affairs.