Nominations close for the 2026 cohort of the African Leadership Institute's Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme at midnight South Africa time on 21 September 2025.
The process for the 2026 cohort did change compared to recent years. This year, AFLI limited the public announcement of the nominations and the open period for nominations is short. For individuals seeking nomination, the location to do so is at AFLI's dedicated site for the nomination, application and selection of candidates, TutuFellows.Africa.
Preferred candidates for the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Programme (ATLP) are people, who, by their actions and achievements, and the values and principles by which they conduct their affairs, have demonstrated their potential as an ethical leader committed to contributing to positive change and development of the continent. We are seeking exceptional emerging African leaders – people who are expected to be the top level leaders in their sphere of activity in the next 5 to 10 years if they are not already in that position, and who are actively engaged in making Africa a better place to live. They must be between 30 and 39 years of age and must be citizens of an African country, and must be currently living in Africa, or temporarily placed abroad by their employer or completing further education abroad or working on African projects for a global organisation.
On a continent blessed with outstanding young leaders, AFLI is fortunate that the Archbishop Tutu Fellowship Programme attracts the extraordinary young people that it does. The large numbers of nominees we have seen apply to the programme in past cohorts bodes well for the continent.
But AFLI's programme size is small, as is its staff. The large numbers from our previous, fully-open nomination phase negatively impacted our capacity to diligently review all of the applications to find the best candidates. We do not wish to outsource selection, or run our process through an imperfect algorithm. For this past 2025 cohort, we received almost 1,000 nominations from across the continent for the cohort of 25 slots.
AFLI accepts only one nomination per nominee, so we are asking nominators, please check first with your potential candidate to see if they have already been nominated. For individuals wanting to be considered, please work closely with your Nominator to ensure a powerful nomination is submitted in good time for consideration for the programme. Please read the information at the PROGRAMME menu about the programme and the selection process. Nominators, should also please read the FAQs before filling out the nomination form.
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