Two Ugandans are among 48 people around the world who have been selected to join Ford Foundation’s prestigious fellowship programme.
Noah Mirembe Gabigogo, co-founder and director of the Taala Foundation Kampala, Uganda; and Michael Richard Katagaya, the team leader of Evidence and Methods Lab Kampala, Uganda, will join the Ford Global Fellows focused on addressing systemic inequality.
Launched in 2020 by the Ford Foundation 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.
Also chosen from East Africa are Ian Damian Tarimo, executive director, Tai Tanzania based in Dar Es Salaam; and Angela Benedicto, founder and executive director, Wote Sawa Domestic Workers Mwanza, Tanzania.
The 48 emerging leaders from around the world, including East Africa, join the inaugural 24 fellows whose fellowship has been extended for two more years. Together, all 72 active fellows are bringing their local experiences to each other to design and reimagine solutions to global drivers of inequality.
The fellowship will provide leaders with tools, networks, and solidarity they need to work better, smarter, and more sustainably in the long haul.
Because COVID-19 has laid bare the crisis of inequality, and this has been compounded by vaccine inequity, job precarity, climate change, rising authoritarianism, and racial and gender inequity, Ford has adapted the fellowship to meet the urgency of the crises with a renewed urgency to combat it.
In response, the Foundation is scaling up its flagship global fellowship programme to support leaders from communities who face injustice head-on and help them cultivate their ideas and energy in solving long-standing inequalities exposed or exacerbated by the pandemic.
“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, in a statement issued on October 19,2021.
He added: “People who are most proximate to injustice are stepping up and surfacing solutions to local challenges driven by global structures of inequality. More than ever, these emerging leaders across the globe need each other to strengthen and accelerate their ideas. We aim to support fellows as they build lasting networks and institutions that carry the work forward.”
Over 10 years, the Ford Global Fellows is looking to build a global network of 240 fellows who will be working together to build a community of practice, strengthening their networks with change-makers in the broader social justice field, build influence, and advance ideas and solutions across issues, borders, sectors, and contexts.
