Achmat Dangor

Achmat Dangor is the Chief Executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He is also a writer of novels, short stories, poems and plays.

In the mid-1980s he headed the Kagiso Trust, the largest black-led development foundation in South Africa. He was also active in the United Democratic Front and helped found the Congress of South African Writers.

He has filled many crucial positions in South Africa, including Head of the Rural Development Forum, CEO of the Independent Development Trust and Executive Director of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. He worked on various commissions set up by the first post-apartheid government to stimulate the growth and transformation of non-governmental development organisations.

In 2004 he joined the Geneva-based Secretariat of the Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) as Director of Advocacy and Communications. He returned to South Africa at the end of 2006.

Aicha Bah Diallo

Aicha Bah Diallo is Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Guinea and Advisor/Chargée de Mission to the Director General of Unesco for Africa.

From 1996 to 2005, as a senior leader of Unesco, she worked to lower the barriers to education for disadvantaged groups. Bah Diallo served as Guinea’s Minister of Education for seven years (1989-1996), implementing a highly successful education reform programme which also supported the empowerment of women and girls.

Bah Diallo was a panellist at the World Conference on Women held in Kenya (1985) and in China (1995). She also played a guiding role in the launching of the Forum for African Women Educationalists and the Association for Strengthening Higher Education for Women in Africa.

Ali Mufuruki

Ali Mufuruki is the chairman and CEO of Infotech Investment Group, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The group has business interests in retail, advertising, IT and telecommunications services. Mufuruki is the current lead CEO of the Tanzania CEOs’ Roundtable, a policy dialogue forum. He is also a member of the Presidential Investors Roundtable, which advises the President of Tanzania on economic policy issues. He serves on several boards in and outside Tanzania.

Mufuruki is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute Class of 2001 and chairman of the Africa Leadership Initiative (ALI).

Bobby Godsell

Bobby Godsell is Chairman of Eskom Holdings, South Africa’s electricity producer. He also chairs Business Leadership South Africa (representing the 70 largest public and private companies in the country) and co-chairs the Millennium Labour Council, a body that provides for social dialogue between South African business and labour leaders. He is the Chairman of Freeworld Coatings, a listed company, and an honorary professor at Wits Business School.

He was previously CEO of AngloGold Ashanti, the gold mining company, president of the South African Chamber of Mines and Chairman of the World Gold Council.

Brett Smith

Brett Smith is the founding director of the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Miami University. His research focuses on social entrepreneurship and he has had his work published in many leading academic journals. His work on social entrepreneurship has also been featured in Time, Business Week, Financial Times and CNN, among others.

In 2008, he won the Ashoka Award for Pedagogical Innovation at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship for the partnership he developed with Bono’s company to found Edun Live on Campus, a socially conscious clothing company that aims to teach social entrepreneurship and provide economic development in Africa.

Cheick Diarra

As the chairman for Africa at Microsoft Corporation, Cheick Diarra aims to make it possible for all the people of the continent to access and use technology in their everyday lives.

Born and raised in Mali, Diarra obtained his PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering in the United States and later joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

In 1999, Diarra created the Pathfinder Foundation for Education and Development, an organisation that supports female science students. In 2002, he was appointed CEO of the African Virtual University (AVU), which offers internationally recognised science and business degrees at a much lower cost.

Among his other roles, Diarra is Unesco’s Goodwill Ambassador for Science, Technology and Enterprise and chairman of Ecobank, the pan-African banking group. He received the African Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998.

Colin Coleman

Colin is head of the South African office of Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Division.

From the early 1980s, he was involved in South Africa’s change process and, from 1989 until South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, in its constitutional transition as an executive director for the Consultative Business Movement.

Coleman served in working groups of the multi-party talks, facilitated the International Mediation Forum and helped to negotiate the agreement to facilitate all parties’ participation in South Africa’s 1994 elections.
In 1996, he was nominated as one of the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders for Tomorrow.  He received the Harvard Business School’s “Business Statesman Award” in 1994 and was named one of Euromoney’s World Top Ten “Financing leaders for the 21st Century”.

Danny Jordaan

Danny Jordaan is the CEO of the Local Organising Committee for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He has been a lecturer at a tertiary institution, a politician, sportsman, sports administrator, businessman and political activist in the struggle against apartheid.

As a student he was a member of the South African Student Organisation and the South African Black Students Intervarsity Council. Following graduation he joined a number of civic, political and sports anti-apartheid organisations, among which were the United Democratic Front and the South African Council on Sport (SACOS). He later became the vice-president of SACOS in the Eastern Cape, and then president of the South African Football Association (SAFA).

He has served on the boards of many sports organisations and was instrumental in the reincorporation of South Africa into the international sports arena.

In 1994 he received a Special Presidential Award from President Nelson Mandela. He has also received numerous other lifetime achievement awards.

Dele Olojede

Dele Olojede is the founder of Timbuktu Media, a news and information group serving Nigeria and beyond. Olojede is the first African-born winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is a member of the governing board of the Aspen Institute’s Africa Leadership Initiative (ALI) and serves on the international advisory board of the Global Integrity Alliance. He has served on the juries of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Alicia Patterson Fellowship.

Olojede was bureau chief for New York Newsday in Johannesburg, Beijing and the United Nations. He has reported from more than 50 countries and his work has appeared in more than 150 publications around the world. He was educated at the University of Lagos and Columbia University in the City of New York.

Dumisani Nyoni

Dumisani Nyoni is a youth activist, leader, motivator and consultant with a range of experiences, from building and co-ordinating global action networks, to facilitating large and small gatherings and advising organisations on strategy development and team building.

Nyoni is a graduate of psychology from Cambridge College and is the director of the Zimele Institute in Zimbabwe, which works with rural schools, teachers and local communities to improve schools.

He has worked with the Earth Council at its former headquarters in Costa Rica and helped to launch the youth component of the international Earth Charter Initiative, for which he is an adviser. Nyoni has also worked as a youth co-ordinator at the Youth Employment Summit (YES) Campaign.

Erik Charas

Erik Charas is the president of @Verdade (the truth), which is Mozambique’s biggest circulation newspaper. @Verdade reaches more than 400 000 people in Mozambique and is the country’s first high-quality, free newspaper.

Charas is also the founder and CEO of Charas LDA, an investment company that invests in Mozambican entrepreneurs. He has an engineering degree from the University of Cape Town and more than 10 years’ experience in the private and public sectors in Southern Africa.
He was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2006, an Archbishop Tutu African Leadership Initiative fellow in 2007 and attended a course on global leadership and public policy in the 21st century in 2008.

Charas chairs several boards of companies and non-profit organisations in Mozambique and other countries

Fred Swaniker

Fred Swaniker is the founder and CEO of the African Leadership Academy, a world-class, pan-African high school that aims to develop future generations of African leaders. Swaniker also helped to launch and is a director of Mount Pleasant English Medium School, one of the top-performing private elementary schools in Botswana.

More recently, Swaniker founded and led the launch of Global Leadership Adventures, a leadership development programme for youth throughout the world. He has been the chief operating officer of bio-tech company Synexa Life Sciences and a consultant for McKinsey & Company. Swaniker holds an MBA degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, a distinction awarded to the top 10% of each graduating class. Swaniker also holds a BA degree magna cum laude in economics from Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, US.

Frene Ginwala

Dr Frene Ginwala, the chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, served as the speaker of the National Assembly for South Africa’s first democratic Parliament from 1994 – 2004.

While in exile she helped to establish the external mission of the ANC and arranged for ANC leaders and members to travel in and out of South Africa clandestinely. On her return to South Africa she was appointed to the Secretariat in the office of then Deputy President Nelson Mandela. She also served as the Deputy Head of the ANC Commission for the Emancipation of Women. During the negotiation process, Dr Ginwala was a member of the ANC team at Codesa.

Before and during her exile, she has worked as a journalist; in Tanzania she established and edited a monthly journal Spearhead. Ginwala continues to work on issues pertaining to human security, strengthening democracy, and promoting good governance, development and human rights.

Funmi Iyanda

Funmi Iyanda is an award-winning broadcaster, sports journalist, columnist and blogger. She has worked in the media for more than 12 years, producing, directing and presenting a wide range of TV programmes.

She is a strong advocate for women’s and children’s rights and the founder of the Change-A-Life project, a family support scheme that has provided educational scholarships to more than 250 young people. Iyanda has participated in forums such as the Vital Voices Global Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Communication and Society. She is an African Leadership Institute Tutu Fellow.

Futhi Mtoba

Futhi Mtoba has been a trailblazer for her gender and race in the South African accounting profession. She was Deloitte’s first black female partner and is the firm’s first black female deputy chairperson. She is the first female president of the Association for the Advancement of Black Accountants of Southern Africa (Abasa), a body dedicated to nurturing emerging black accountants.

Mtobe is a board member of a number of professional organisations, including the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) and the Public Accountants and Auditors Board (PAAB). She also serves on the boards of high-profile financial services institutions, such as the Financial Services Advisory Board and the Money Laundering Advisory Board.

Graça Machel

Graça Machel is a renowned international advocate for women’s and children’s rights and has been a social and political activist over many decades. 

Mrs Machel is the founder and president of the Foundation for Community Development, which makes grants to civil society organisations to help rebuild post-war Mozambique.

Among Mrs Machel’s many current commitments, she is a board member of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization Fund, Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, a member of the Africa Progress Panel, a member of The Elders, a member of the High Level Task Force on Innovative International Finance for Health Systems, and a panel member of the African Peer Review Mechanism.

Iqbal Survé

Iqbal Survé is the Executive Chairman of Sekunjalo Investments and the recipient of numerous South African and international awards as a business leader. He is a strong advocate for business playing a meaningful role to create a more equal and prosperous society.

He is a Fellow of the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles) Business and Environment Programme, a faculty member of Cambridge University Programme for Industry, and Chairman of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town. In 2005, President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Board of Governance of the Clinton Global Initiative along with global business leaders and heads of state. 

Dr Survé was called the “struggle doctor” for his role in working with poor communities and for setting up the Centres for Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture during the apartheid years. For this he was honoured by Unesco and Amnesty International in Paris in 1989.

John Hope Bryant

John Hope Bryant is the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Operation HOPE, a global social investment banking organisation operating in 68 US communities and five provinces in South Africa.  Bryant and HOPE have raised more than $500 million from the private sector to empower the poor.

Bryant is a philanthropic entrepreneur and businessman. He serves as vice-chairman of the bi-partisan US President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy and as Chairman of the Under-Served Committee for the US President’s Council.  He is an advisor on financial literacy and financial empowerment on the Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum.

Bryant has served on several corporate boards, is the author of Banking on our Future, a book on youth and family financial literacy, is a former goodwill ambassador to the US for the United Nations in Geneva, and was selected as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.

In December, 1994, Bryant was selected by Time for its cover story on America’s 50 Most Promising Leaders of the Future.

Kojo Parris

Kojo Malcolm Parris is the head of the Colloquium for Social Entrepreneurs at Johannesburg’s Gordon Institute of Business Science and the founding CEO of Social Private Equity South Africa, a social investment fund that uses classic private equity methodologies.

He is a former investment banker and oversaw investment portfolios at TA Holdings and Takura Ventures Fund in Zimbabwe. He has also worked in operational management for Booker Tate in Papua New Guinea, Australia, Kenya and London.

He is a co-founder of the World Economic Forum-aligned African Social Entrepreneurs Network; chairman of Homeless Talk, a newspaper for indigent persons in Johannesburg; and a mentor to young adults. Parris, who was born in Guyana for whom he is the Honorary Consul to South Africa, won the Cambridge Commonwealth scholarship and read for an MA in Engineering (Manufacturing) at the university.

Kovin Naidoo

Professor Kovin Naidoo, who works with the International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE), has developed a sustainable delivery model for Africa’s poor rural communities.

Naidoo’s model has extended the reach of eye care in South Africa by training community-based health care workers and staffing small clinics with eye care practitioners. To make glasses more affordable, he has worked with companies to obtain cheap frames and lenses, and has trained local people to do the lens fitting, further reducing the cost of the spectacles. He has developed a global distribution centre based in China to source and distribute spectacles to non-governmental organisations and other programmes, cutting costs and improving the sustainability of programmes.

Naidoo has pioneered the ICEE’s social entrepreneurship programme, a joint venture between youth from disadvantaged communities and the public sector.

Leon Wessels

Leon Wessels is a commissioner to the South African Human Rights Commission and an honorary professor of law at the North-West University, previously University of Potchefstroom.
Wessels took part in the Codesa-Kempton Park negotiations and served as deputy chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly. He stepped down from Parliament and politics at the inception of the final Constitution.

He has participated in peace talks in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Great lakes region of Africa and Sri Lanka.

Before South Africa’s transition to democracy he was a member of Parliament for Krugersdorp, the deputy minister of law and order, deputy minister of foreign affairs and held numerous Cabinet positions, including manpower.

Wessels received an LLB from the University of Potchefstroom in 1972, a LLM in 1997 and LLD in 2001.

Lerato Mbele

Lerato Mbele is a South African journalist. Her career began as an intern at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and after a quick rise through the corporation she hosted a diplomatic programme, called The Ambassadors, on SABC Africa. She left broadcasting to pursue her postgraduate studies in the UK and on her return worked at the South African Institute of International Affairs as the head of the Africa Democracy Programme.

She was later lured back to TV to anchor News@1 and host In the Public Interest for the SABC. She now works for CNBC Africa, where she is the anchor for Business AM. Mbele is also the co-editor of Designing Democracy and has won the Pauline Janisch Award for Literature from the World Association of University Women as well as an award for literature from the department of psychology at Amherst College, Massachusetts. She holds a BA degree in political science and anthropology, a BA (Hons) in international relations and an MSc in development studies. 

Leslie Maasdorp

Leslie Maasdorp is Vice-Chairman of Absa Capital and Barclays Capital, a position he has held since October 2006. He served as a non-executive Director of Absa Group and Absa Bank from 2004 until 2006, when he joined the Bank in an executive capacity. From 2002 until 2006 he was the first African to serve on the International Advisory Board of Goldman Sachs International.
Prior to this role he led the privatisation programme of the South African government when he served as Deputy Director General of the Department of Public Enterprises. In 1994 he was appointed Special Advisor to the Minister of Labour. He then joined Deloitte Consulting, where he consulted to large corporates, parastatals and government.
Prior to 1994 he worked as a policy advisor in the Department of Economic Planning of the African National Congress.
In 2007 he was designated a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is Vice-President of Business Leadership South Africa.

Mothomang Diaho

Mothomang Diaho is the head of the dialogue programme at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. This programme focuses on dealing with issues of social justice.

Diaho obtained her medical degree in 1985 at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has diplomas in child health, tropical medicine and hygiene, and public health. She has an MBA from the University of the Witwatersrand and completed an executive programme (PMD) at the Harvard Business School. Diaho is a current fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative (ALI) and is one of the founding members of Teach South Africa, an organisation that recruits graduates to teach Maths and Science in previously disadvantaged schools.

She is also the Programme Manager for the Promise of Leadership Dialogue.

Nkosana Moyo

Nkosana Moyo is a senior adviser to Actis and chairs the Actis Advisory Board in Africa. He is based in London.

Before joining Actis in January 2004, Moyo was with the International Finance Corporation in Washington, DC. He has also served as Zimbabwe’s Minister for Industry and Trade after a career in industry, including working in the financial services sector. Moyo has held senior positions in Africa, Europe and the US. He holds a PhD in physics from Imperial College and an MBA from Cranfield School of Management. He is also World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow and an Eisenhower Fellow.

Pat Pillai

Pat Pillai is a news anchor for eNews Prime Time, executive producer and presenter for Inside Out on the eNews Channel, writer, businessman and social entrepreneur.

He is the founder of Life College, a non-profit organisation inspired by the birth of his son, Vaughn. Life College offers character and leadership education to families, businesses and government.  Life College has over 50 mentors who interact directly with teenage students. Pillai regularly facilitates executive leadership programmes as part of the Life College Business Life Programme.

He was awarded the Ashoka Fellowship in 2007 for his work in founding and launching Life College. Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. 

Patrick Kabuya

Patrick Kabuya is a senior financial management specialist at the World Bank. He is involved in partnering with governments and accounting professional bodies in Africa to enhance financial management and reporting: critical factors that contribute to economic growth.

Kabuya, a Kenyan who has lived in South Africa for past 10 years, is a professional accountant. He has worked for Ernst & Young and the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. In 2008, Kabuya graduated with an African Leadership Certificate from a programme pioneered by NEPAD Business Foundation and facilitated by Wits Business School.

Kabuya is a passionate contributor to education in South Africa and dedicated to developing future leaders.

Paul Kagame

His Excellency Paul Kagame was born in October 1957 in Rwanda’s Southern Province.

His family fled pre-independence ethnic persecution and violence in 1960, crossing into Uganda where Kagame spent thirty years as a refugee.

Determined to resist oppressive regimes, as a young man, Paul Kagame joined current Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and his group of guerilla fighters to launch a war to free Uganda from dictatorship. Under the new government, he served as a senior military officer.

In 1990, Paul Kagame returned to Rwanda to lead the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in the four-year struggle to liberate the country from the autocratic and divisive order established since independence.
Led by Kagame, the Rwanda Patriotic Army defeated the genocidal government in July 1994 and the RPF subsequently set Rwanda on its current course towards reconciliation, nation building and socioeconomic development.

Paul Kagame was appointed Vice-President and Minister for Defence in the Government of National Unity on 19 July 1994, and four years later was elected Chairman of the RPF, a partner in the national Government.

On 17 April 2000, Paul Kagame was unanimously elected President of the Republic of Rwanda by the Transitional National Assembly, and took the Oath of Office on 22 April 2000.

Following the country’s first ever democratically contested multi-party elections held in August 2003, Paul Kagame became President of the Republic of Rwanda for a seven-term mandate on 12 September 2003.

President Kagame has received recognition for his leadership in peace building and reconciliation, development, good governance, promotion of human rights and women’s empowerment, and advancement of education and ICT, including the following:

• Distinction of Grand Condon in the Most Venerable Order of the Knighthood of the Pioneers of the Republic of Liberia for the Promotion of Women’s Rights and advancement of women in leadership (2009)
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws by Florida State University (2009)
• Abolitionist of the Year Award by Hands Off Cain (2007)
• African Gender Award by Femmes Africa Solidarité (2007)
• ICT Africa Award (2006 and 2007)
• Honorary Doctorate by Oklahoma Christian University in the USA (2006)
• African National Achievement Award by the Africa America Institute (2005)
• Andrew Young Medal for Capitalism and Social Progress by Georgia State University in the USA (2005)
• Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of the Pacific in the USA (2005)
• Elected 1st Vice President of the African Union (2003)
• Global Leadership Award by the Young Presidents Organisation (2003)

His Excellency Paul Kagame is married to Jeannette Nyiramongi and they have four children. President Kagame is a keen tennis player and football fan.

Peggy Dulany

Peggy Dulany is the chairperson of The Synergos Institute, which she founded in 1968 to address poverty. The institute’s aim is to facilitate relationships between community leaders and business and political leaders so they can develop ways to overcome poverty.

She has headed a high school programme for drop-outs in the Boston area of the US, and consulted the United Nations and the Ford Foundation on health care and family planning.

Dulany is an honours graduate of Radcliffe College and holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University. She is also the chairperson of ProVentures, a business development company for Latin America and Southern Africa.

Raenette Taljaard

Raenette Taljaard is director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, a politically independent think tank whose purpose is to strengthen liberal democracy in South Africa through research, debate and publication. 
Taljaard teaches economics, public financial management and utility regulation at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Public and Development Management. In addition, she lectures locally and abroad on the regulation of private military and private security companies and has appeared before Parliament’s Defence Committee as an expert witness in this regard.

Taljaard is a Yale World Fellow, a Fellow of the Emerging Leaders Programme of the Centre for Leadership and Public Values (UCT’s Graduate School of Business and Duke University) and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

Reuel Khoza

Reuel Khoza is Chairman of the South African companies Aka Capital, Nedbank Group and Corobrik. He is a visiting professor at Rhodes Investec Business School and Professor Extra Ordinairé at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, as well as co-author of The Power of Governance and author of Let Africa Lead.

As Chairman of the Nepad Business Foundation, Khoza initiated the establishment of the African Leadership Development Programme jointly run by the Wits Business School and the Nepad Business Foundation.

He is a Fellow and current President of the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa. 

Ronnie Ntuli

Ronnie Ntuli is the founder and chairman of Thelo Group, an independent investment company with interests in the aviation and resources sectors, and chief executive of Incwala Resources, an investment company focusing on the platinum group metals sector.

He was previously founder and CE of Andisa Capital, a diversified financial services group. Ntuli is chairman of the National Empowerment Fund, a development finance agency established by the government of South Africa to promote transformation of the South African economy.

He is a member of the Honorary International Investor Council, which advises the President of Nigeria on how to encourage investment into that country.

Tim du Plessis

Tim du Plessis was appointed editor of Beeld in February 2009. Previously he edited the Sunday paper Rapport for seven years and was also editor of The Citizen for 15 months.

He has been a journalist since 1976 and has extensive experience in most areas of news gathering, management and production.

Du Plessis graduated from the universities of Johannesburg and Stellenbosch. In 1992/1993 he spent an academic year at Harvard University in the US as a Nieman Fellow.

He is a council member of the South African National Editor’s Forum.

Tokyo Sexwale

Tokyo Sexwale is Founder and Executive Chairman of Mvelaphanda Holdings (Pty) Ltd, which is primarily a mining and energy house, but which includes other strategic investments in hotels, transportation telecommunications, property, construction, health, banking and financial services. Mr Sexwale is a former freedom fighter and political prisoner, who was sentenced to 18 years on Robben Island for treason and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa.

He is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee and was the first Premier of South Africa’s Gauteng province. Mr Sexwale is a trustee and founder of the Sexwale Family Foundation, trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Desmond Tutu Peace Trust and Makana Trust for Ex-Political Prisoners. He is the Consul General (HON) of Finland in South Africa, Chairman of the Africa Asia Association, the South African/Japanese Business Forum and Co-Chairman of the Russia-South Africa Business Council. He is Chancellor of the Vaal University of Technology, a member of the JP Morgan Chase International Advisory Council and of the Brookings Institution International Advisory Council.

He is a director of the FIFA World Cup 2010 Local Organising Committee and the philanthropy organisation, Synergos. He is also Chairman of the South African National Defence Force Support Council and of the loveLife Advisory Board, and is a member of the FIFA Committee for Fair Play and Social Responsibility.

Uhuru Kenyatta

Uhuru Kenyatta is Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. He is also the governor of the East African Development Bank, a member of the permanent committee on management of Grand Coalition affairs and a member of the National Economic and Social Council. Kenyatta has also been elected to the Gatundu South Parliament.

He is active in planning and fundraising for many development projects in Kenya, including initiatives that uplift communities through schools and churches and infrastructure programmes.

In 1998 he received the Order of the Grand Warrior of Kenya and in 2001 was made an Elder of the Order of the Golden Heart of Kenya.

Victor van Vuuren

Vic van Vuuren started his working career at the South African Department of Justice as a public prosecutor and magistrate. Thereafter he moved to Transnet and later took up the position of Chief Executive: Human Resources at Sanlam.

While at Sanlam, he was seconded for 2003 and 2004 to the position of Chief Operations Officer at the newly created Business Unity South Africa, which he helped establish. In 2005 he joined BUSA on a full-time basis and was the representative for business at Nedlac (National Economic, Development and Labour Council).

In February 2009 Van Vuuren was appointed Director of the International Labour Organisation, Southern Africa, based in Pretoria.  He also serves on the Council for Higher Education and represented organised business on JIPSA (Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition).

Yasmin Louise Sooka

Yasmin Louise Sooka is the executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights. Before joining the foundation, she served as a commissioner on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the deputy chairperson to the Human Rights Violations Committee. In 2004 she was appointed by the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to serve as international commissioner on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

She is considered an expert on both transitional justice and gender. She regularly consults internationally to governments, international agencies, commissions and civil society organisations on transitional justice and peace building. Sooka also serves as an executive member to the Niwano Peace Foundation and is a trustee of the Centre for Conflict Resolution and the Black Sash Trust. She currently chairs the steering committee for South Africa’s Action Plan to address racism, racial intolerance, xenophobia and other related intolerance.

Yemi Osinbajo

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice. He initiated the state’s justice reform project, which established a Directorate for Citizens’ Rights.

Osinbajo was the Head of Public Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos. Between 1988 and 1992, he was the Special Adviser to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He also served at various times as a staff member of the United Nations and is currently an advisor to the Ethics Committee of the African Development Bank.

He founded the Orderly Society Trust to nurture and support institutions, ideas, values and practices that support order in society. He is also co-founder of the Convention on Business Integrity and the Justice Research Institute Ltd.