MTN was launched in 1994 as a leading provider of communication services, offering cellular network access and business solutions. After building up a successful operation in South Africa, achieving a market share of some 38 per cent (second only to Vodacom, the dominant mobile telecommunications provider), the group began its expansion into the rest of Africa in 1998. It was the first South African cell phone network operator to do so.

In August 2019, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of the African Leadership University (ALU), Fred Swaniker, and co-founder and former chief operating officer (COO), Khurram Masood, considered how to ensure the sustainability of ALU and its vision: to develop three million high-calibre, ethical leaders in Africa by 2035. ALU’s innovative business model aimed at solving Africa’s challenges by instilling good leadership values and an entrepreneurial mindset in its students. 

In July 2018, Donné Nicol, outgoing chief executive officer (CEO) of the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation, considered how to manage her exit, as she would hand over to Mmabatho Maboya, the new CEO, in September 2018. Nicol, who had worked closely with Ramaphosa since 1991, had helped to establish all his philanthropic initiatives. She had been CEO of the Foundation since 2015, and executive director of its predecessor, the Shanduka Foundation since its inception in 2004.

In July 2020, Charlene Lackay, group corporate social investment (CSI) manager at financial services group, Momentum Metropolitan Holdings (Momentum Metropolitan) was considering how best to monitor and evaluate the activities of the Momentum Metropolitan Foundation volunteer programme. Pressure on funding made it critical to provide evidence of what the programme was achieving.

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began having a devastating impact on the Egyptian economy and people, and Noura Selim, executive director of the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD), considered how the foundation should address the needs of the most marginalised populations. Up until then, SFSD had largely focused on improving the lives of poor people through education, and social and economic empowerment programmes.

By June 2019, Janet Mawiyoo, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF), and her executive team had reached the conclusion that it was no longer viable for the Foundation, which carried out the organisation’s development activities, to be so integrally involved in the operations of the investment activities of the KCDF Trust, the latter having been established in the mid-2000s to manage and grow the assets of the Foundation.

At the beginning of September 2023, Dr Judy Dlamini, the founder and chair of the Female Academic Leaders Fellowship (FALF), reflected on FALF’s progress in its pursuit of transformation in academia. Formed in 2020, FALF was an independent, registered, non-profit company that aimed specifically to empower black and coloured women from South Africa to progress into academic leadership at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).

On 5 March 2020, the first in-country South African tested positive for COVID-19. Less than three weeks later, on 23 March, after schools and universities had already closed and a number of organisations had adopted a work-from-home policy, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the whole country would go into hard lockdown for 21 days from midnight on 26 March 2020.

It was January 2024, almost 13 years since Fayus Inc, a US-based distributor of Nigerian food products, had started investing in oil palm plantations in Nigeria. The project was progressing well and included a plan to build an oil palm processing mill so that Fayus would own a fully vertically-integrated oil palm business by 2027. Fatai Yusufu, who had founded the business in 1992 and grown it into a global enterprise, now had the opportunity to expand the plantation by a further 5 000 hectares (almost doubling its size).

It was July 2021 and a beautiful midwinter day in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The temperate conditions belied the turmoil of political protests that had spread to all-out vandalism and looting across the province and, to a more limited extent, Gauteng. Durban’s inner-city, home to the Denis Hurley Centre (DHC), an inter-faith charity serving homeless people in greater Durban, was greatly affected. As Raymond Perrier, director of the Centre, watched the events unfold, he knew there would now be an even greater need for the work of the Centre.