This archive report was first published on 27 October 2021.
On October 27, 2021, the Ford Foundation announced the expansion of its global fellowship, adding 48 new Fellows to address the inequalities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The new Fellows, including some from East Africa, will join the initial 24 Fellows to tackle the crisis of inequality, which has been compounded by vaccine inequity, climate change, rising authoritarianism, and racial and gender inequity.
Among the selected Fellows from East Africa are Noah Mirembe Gabigogo, a co-founder and director of the Taala Foundation in Uganda; Michael Richard Katagaya, the team leader of Evidence and Methods Lab in Uganda; Ian Damian Tarimo, executive director of Tai, based in Dar Es Salaam; and Angela Benedicto, founder and executive director of Wote Sawa Domestic Workers Mwanza, Tanzania.
The fellowship provides individualized coaching to help grow leadership skills and efforts to help Fellows reach a wider audience. Each new fellow will receive a no-strings-attached $25,000 stipend.
"We are scaling the Ford Global Fellows faster because this crisis moment requires bolder commitments to creating a more just and equitable future," said Adria Goodson, director of the Ford Global Fellowship.
Launched in 2020 in New York, the Ford Global Fellows is a 10-year, $50 million programme that aims to support leaders across the globe to shift structures and systems of inequality over time.