The Salim Ahmed Salim Digital Archive Webinar Series - Episode 2: Leadership
CGC | Nairobi is partnering with the Salim Ahmed Salim Digital Archive (SAS Digital Archive) to present an exclusive series of webinars exploring the life and legacy of Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim. Over six decades, Dr. Salim has played a pivotal role in shaping and influencing key moments in world history. His service as the former Prime Minister of Tanzania, renowned international diplomat, and Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) – now the African Union, has left an indelible mark on history.
Dr. Salim's contributions include helping dismantle apartheid in South Africa, repositioning Africa in the post-Cold War order, and participating in Tanzania's constitutional reforms. He is also an alumnus of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he simultaneously served as Tanzania's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Join us in celebrating the remarkable journey and enduring impact of Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim through these enlightening webinars.
Why Participate in this Series?
With the guidance of leading experts, our audience will delve into Dr. Salim's rich experiences and perspectives through archived interviews, speeches, academic papers, personal notes, correspondences, and news clippings. They will engage in lively discussions on leadership, governance, digitization, and access to information. Moreover, this platform aims to foster partnerships and collaboration to address contemporary challenges that leaders face today.
Episode Two - August 29th, 2024, 4 pm EAT
Exploring Effective Leadership in Complex Environment
From this session, you will learn:
- Leadership principles and strategies from Dr. Salim's diplomatic career
- Adapting leadership styles to diverse cultural and political contexts
- Leading with integrity and vision in challenging times.
Panelists
Glenn Denning joined SIPA in 2009 as founding Director of the Master of Public Administration in Development Practice (MPA-DP), a joint undertaking of SIPA with Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He teaches core courses on Universal Food Security and Sustainable Development Policy and Practice.
From 2011 to 2014, Denning served as Director of the Earth Institute’s Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development. Prior to joining SIPA, Denning helped establish The MDG Centre of East and Southern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, serving as its founding director from 2004 to 2009.
Over the past 40 years, Denning has advised governments and international organizations on agriculture and food policy in more than 50 countries. At the global level, he served on the UN Millennium Project Hunger Task Force (2004-6) and the Senior Steering Group of the UN High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (2009-13). Denning worked in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research for 24 years and held senior management positions at the International Rice Research Institute and the World Agroforestry Centre.
Denning contributed to the design and establishment of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) and served on GAFSP’s Technical Advisory Committee (2010-14), reviewing, evaluating, and endorsing country proposals that resulted in approval of over $1 billion of grant funding to more than 25 countries. He also served on the founding board of the Institute of African Leadership for Sustainable Development (UONGOZI Institute). Denning has advised the Asian Development Bank on aligning its strategy and operations to the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.
In 2000, Denning was honored by the Government of Cambodia as Commander of the Royal Order of Sahametrei for his role in establishing the Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute and his contributions to increasing national rice production. In 2014, Denning received the Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Denning is the author of Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet (Columbia University Press, 2023).
Hon. Dennitah Ghati, HSC is a well known gender, women’s rights and disability rights advocate in Kenya, EA and beyond. Up until August 2022, she was a specially elected Member of Parliament for Persons with Disabilities in the Kenya National Assembly. Previously, she was elected Women Representative for Migori County 2013-2017. A recipient of the 2021 Shujaaz Awards for her exemplary work in promoting the Welfare of Persons with Disabilities, Hon. Dennitah Ghati is also former President of the Commonwealth Parliamentarians with Disabilities Network, a network of 56 Legislatures of the Commonwealth spanning across Africa, Asia, Pacific, Pakistan, the Europe and the Caribbean. Hon. Dennitah Ghati currently sits on the Advisory Board of the Centre for CommonWealth Affairs, UK - a pan-commonwealth think tank working with partners and members across the Commonwealth to improve on global issues.
Hon. Ghati has over 15 years experience in both Legislative, gender and development work having worked with the Kenya Parliament, National, regional and international organizations including UNICEF Somalia, American Jewish World Service NY, Film Aid International and the Population Council.
A seasoned journalist/editor, Hon. Ghati was born in Maeta village, Kuria East Constituency of Migori County – Kenya.
Hon. Dennitah Ghati holds a Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University School of Social Work, New York- USA. She also holds a Bachelors degree in Sociology from Kenyatta University- Kenya, and a Diploma in Journalism from The Kenya Institute of Mass Communication- KIMC. Ghati also has post graduate executive training in Governance from the University of the Witwatersrand, (WITS), South Africa.
The mother of one is a publisher, a certified Financial education expert, an avid reader who loves cooking, She is extremely well travelled across the globe.
Dr. Felix Kiruthu is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya. He is a historian with keen scholarly interests on the African political economy. He has served as the Chairman, Department of Public Policy and Administration from 2013 to 2017 and as the Director of Kenyatta University Nairobi City Campus from 2018 to 2023. He has published several research articles, books and book chapters, focusing on the nexus between history, political dynamics, governance and conflict in Africa.
Innocent Lugha Bashungwa is a seasoned Tanzanian politician and the current Minister of Works in Tanzania. Bashungwa is a prominent member of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) political party and has represented the Karagwe constituency (Lake Zone) in the Tanzanian Parliament since 2015.
Bashungwa has an extensive background in government, having previously served as the Minister of Information, Culture, Arts and Sports, Minister of Defence, and Minister of State in the President's Office responsible for Regional Administration and Local Government. His parliamentary work has included participation in key committees focused on budgets, energy and minerals, and trade and investments.
Beyond his political career, Bashungwa has contributed to the Tanzania Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Secretariat, helping to develop a comprehensive understanding of the extractive industries' economic, fiscal, and taxation aspects. He played a key role in overseeing the annual reconciliation reports on payments made by extractive companies and the revenue received by the Tanzanian government. He is also an active member of the national team for mining, oil, and gas revenue forecasting, an initiative coordinated by the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA).
Bashungwa's academic credentials include a Master’s degree in International Affairs with a concentration in International Economic Policy and Finance from Columbia University in New York, obtained in May 2010. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, USA, which he completed in May 2002.
Moderator
Significantly, I began my primary education at the William Pattern School in early 1960s London, where my father had gone as a law student. This led to a precocious competence in English as a second language, added to the Lunyala and Lusamia dialects which I had learned as a child; to which I was to add proficiency in Kiswahili and French, having also studied Latin, German and Italian at various stages in my youth.
Upon my family’s return to Kenya, I was “discovered,” at the school where I was to finish my primary schooling, by a Speech Day prize-giver, a man who had been seconded by the BBC to work for the KBC - the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. Thus began an apprenticeship, at the age of 12, as talent for the Kenya Schools’ Broadcasting Division, which provided nation-wide tuition through radio. This continued into my high school years. While at the University of Nairobi, where I majored in French, I worked as a news’ reader for the General (understand English) Service of what had become the VOK – the Voice of Kenya. This coincided with growing national recognition as a stage actor. In combination, my communication skills led to a shift to presenting on television. With broadcasting, stage and screen acting and print journalism as sustained sidelines, my professional mainstay was as a high school teacher of French, for over 25 years, before I retired, in 2008.
In the recent past, I turned first to television presenting, full time, and thereafter to consultancy work as a bilingual (English and French) international moderator at high level conferences, with a reputation for meticulous preparation, courteous tenacity and high intellectual rigour, with the possible injection of humour.