Jeff Skoll has been funding pandemic preparedness for more than a decade, even longer than Bill Gates. In recent months, he’s increased his philanthropic giving to help combat Covid-19.



Nine years ago, Jeff Skoll’s film company Participant Media partnered with Warner Brothers to put out Contagion, a movie about a global pandemic that started with a virus from a bat. An American businesswoman (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) came home from a trip to China and unknowingly spread a novel, and at times, deadly disease. While many viewed the film as pure science fiction, Skoll had ulterior motives. He hoped the movie would help build support for funding the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also warn the world about the potential dangers of a global pandemic.



Skoll, 55, became a billionaire just over two decades ago as a result of stock he received as eBay’s first president. He left eBay in 2001 and has since co-produced more than 100 films and TV programs, all with socially relevant themes including the climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore, factory farming documentary Food Inc., the miniseries When They See Us and the 2016 Academy Award best picture winner Spotlight, about The Boston Globe’s investigations into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. 



While his impassioned film-making pretty much ground to a halt temporarily with California’s shelter-in-place orders, his 2011 movie&nbsp;Contagion&nbsp;has become the must watch-at-home hit of the pandemic—it’s the number one selling title to date this year, according to Warner Brothers, the distributor. (It won’t disclose the number of times it’s been rented or sold.) In late March, Participant,&nbsp;Contagion&nbsp;screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and director Steven Soderbergh worked with Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and other cast members to produce public service announcements about washing your hands and staying home.



Beyond backing a movie about a pandemic, Skoll has been funding pandemic preparedness and prevention since 2009 — six years before Bill Gates’ now well known TED talk warning about them &#8212; through the Skoll Global Threats Fund, to which he pledged $100 million. (The other threats: climate change, water scarcity, nuclear weapons and conflict in the Middle East.)



Since the start of this year, Skoll has contributed an additional $200 million to his charitable foundation—$100 million of which was announced in late April and will go toward fighting Covid-19. He put the other $100 million in earlier this year, he tells Forbes, adding that he hadn’t bothered to publicize it. “I don’t see this as a money squirt,” Skoll explains. “This is a resource allocation to an area we know well. And this is an emergency.”



Newly bulked up, the Skoll Foundation promised to quadruple its grantmaking this year to $200 million. New beneficiaries in 2020 include some of the poorest folks in Los Angeles and the contact tracing program being launched across California.“This is the rainy day we’ve all been saving for,” Skoll says of his charitable giving. “If not now, when?” 



He’s been working up to 20 hours a day in his kitchen in Beverly Hills — on a call in early June, he jokes that it’s his “command center,” equipped with a couple of iPads, a MacBook and some bluetooth devices — talking to people around the globe, taking the pulse of the pandemic and searching out individuals, organizations and companies with new ideas. “Just the science, the learnings of the virus — almost every day there’s some revelation that we didn’t know,” says Skoll.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The pandemics research that Skoll started funding through the Skoll Global Threats Fund spun off into a nonprofit called Ending Pandemics in January 2018, with a seed grant from Skoll. “It’s all about early detection and rapid response,” says Ending Pandemics President Dr. Mark Smolinski.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Skoll has been funding pandemic preparedness and prevention since 2009 — six years before Bill Gates’ TED talk warning about them — through the Skoll Global Threats Fund, which he spun off into Ending Pandemics in 2018.</h2>



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Skoll got wind of the novel coronavirus early on, back in December —where it started. “We had colleagues on the ground in Wuhan. We had an idea that a zoonotic disease had jumped to humans,” he says. By January he and his team began to be concerned about countries with trade ties to China — particularly in Africa, where some of the social entrepreneurs that the Skoll Foundation has supported are operating.&nbsp;



In early February, the Skoll Foundation made its first Covid-19 related grant: $3 million to the African Field Epidemiology Network, a group working with the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (the Africa CDC) to help coordinate African countries’ response and to boost surveillance and detection. The Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation donated to the same group around the same time. Beginning with those two grants, says Africa CDC Director Dr. John Nkengasong, “we were able to rally rapid responders to Addis Ababa [for training] and send them to Nigeria and Cameroon. We were able to scale up diagnostics.” Funding from others then followed, including the MasterCard foundation, Germany, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.  



In &nbsp;March&nbsp; it made a grant to the Southern African Center for Infectious Disease Surveillance Foundation (SACIDS) and a similar group in East Africa. One outcome: Mozambique, which had the infrastructure to test for Covid-19 but limited money to buy tests, got the needed funds and ramped up testing four-fold, according to Smolinski.&nbsp;



The Skoll foundation’s next move was to quickly create a fund for both its current and past grantees — mostly social entrepreneurs. Sixty-four organizations were given $50,000 grants. “We figured they would need emergency funding,” Skoll explains.



Though the Skoll Foundation has traditionally supported social entrepreneurs who work in lower income countries, in the past few months it has made some donations closer to home. Because Los Angeles County has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, Skoll reached out to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to offer assistance. In late April, his foundation made a $2 million gift to the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, which is providing cash assistance to families hit hardest by Covid-19. 



Skoll also connected with California Governor Gavin Newsom and his senior advisor on social innovation, Kathleen Kelly Janus. The Skoll Foundation is donating $8 million to support California’s response to Covid-19, starting with $4.1 million for the public awareness campaign around contact tracing, which Janus says “will be really critical to preventing a second wave of Covid-19.”&nbsp;



Smolinski’s team, which had already partnered with Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital to build a crowdsourced symptom reporting tracker called Flu Near You in 2012 to show flu trends in neighborhoods and cities, rolled out Covid Near You in early March. The app lets people anonymously report if they’re feeling healthy or not, with zip code info, as  a way to track current and potential hotspots. 



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Skoll’s Ending Pandemics has partnered with governments and public health authorities in 36 countries — 11 of which have surveillance systems tracking Covid-19 and other infectious diseases.</h2>



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Ending Pandemics has partnered with governments and public health authorities in 36 countries — 11 of which have surveillance systems that Smolinski says are “up to speed.” One is Cambodia, a country of 14 million people, where all four telecom companies support a free mobile app that both receives info about disease and provides information. Calls have gone from 600 a day before the pandemic to 15,000, and the vast majority of the Covid-19 cases in the country were first identified through the hotline, Smolinski says. Cambodia, the country that took in a cruise ship no one else wanted, so far has just 129 cases and no deaths, he adds.



Through the Audacious Project, a philanthropic group with about 30 members launched by TED conference curator Chris Anderson with Jeff Skoll and Richard Branson, Skoll and others are supporting Boston-based Partners in Health, which responded to the Ebola crisis in 2014. The multi-million dollar grant from the Audacious Project enables Partners in Health to share its contact tracing expertise over the coming year with roughly 19 public health departments across the U.S. “We started by helping the state of Massachusetts put together a contact tracing system, and everyone else wanted to know what we were doing,” says Joia Mukherjee, Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health. “This funding has allowed us to expand our team. What we are hoping is that state and federal money will be forthcoming.” 



Mukherjee applauds Skoll’s approach to philanthropy. “Jeff has always been a systems thinker, and that has been transformative for Partners In Health,” she says.&nbsp;



Skoll also contributed funding to an ambitious global project called the Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology Network — GIDEoN for short —being spearheaded by Columbia University epidemiologist Ian Lipkin, who directs the university’s Center for Infection and Immunity. Lipkin has lined up the equivalent of the National Institutes of Health in 12 countries including India, Brazil and China and together they’ll share information about outbreaks and disease samples. With GIDEoN,&nbsp; Lipkin explains, “we’re trying to upgrade the capacity for detecting infectious agents and toxins, particularly in the developing world.”&nbsp;



While Skoll has been involved in global philanthropy for nearly two decades, he now has an even more personal reason for being involved in the fight against deadly diseases. While working on Ebola in 2014, he contracted a rare tropical disease that took two years to diagnose. He took an 18 month medical leave of absence and is feeling better now.



Despite many challenges, Skoll is an optimist, even about pandemics. Yes, the number of cases will likely increase as U.S. states open back up, he says. But he’s hopeful that a treatment for Covid-19-an existing drug—can work and be scaled up for distribution sometime this summer. “I hope we can get the solutions in place in the next few months. I see a path to it,” he says.



As for future pandemics, Skoll sees a silver lining.  “There are so many zoonotic viruses that jump over from animals to humans. Most of them peter out and turn into something less lethal. I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see any terrible new pandemic any time soon, says Skoll.  “If anything, the world is on watch now.”



&#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/">Kerry A. Dolan</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/worlds-billionaires">Billionaires</a>

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How The Billionaire Behind The Movie ‘Contagion’ Is Working To Stop This Pandemic—And The Next One

The night we go to press with this issue is when Lupita Nyong’o jets in from Kampala to Johannesburg for the premiere of her new film, Disney’s Queen of Katwe, releasing in South Africa mid-October.
Getting a phone interview – even two exclusive email quotes – from this African A-lister, despite relentlessly pursuing her PR machinery for months, has proven painfully difficult.
But this is Lupita, the African who brought home the best supporting actress Oscar for her turn as Patsey in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave in 2014. Her Cinderella-esque pose with the Oscar statue in the billowing blue – a color she famously said reminded her of Nairobi – Prada dress is still fresh in social media memory.
This spring, she was seen in Eclipsed, which made its Broadway debut and was written by another famous African daughter, Danai Gurira, the playwright more popular as the actress in The Walking Dead.
Eclipsed, a story about hope and activism starring a cast of all-African women, saw Lupita scoop the best Broadway debut performance award at the 2016 Theatre World Awards. The play explores the journey of four women drawn together due to the turmoil in their home country, Liberia.
Referring to her portrayal in Eclipsed, The New York Times said: “The superb Lupita Nyong’o is one of the most radiant young actors to be seen on Broadway in recent seasons.”
The Mexican-born Lupita, who was raised in Kenya, plays a part closer to home in Queen of Katwe, as Harriet, the strong-willed mother of Ugandan child chess prodigy, Phiona Mutesi.
The coming-of-age film, which is a true story, set in Katwe and Kibuli in Uganda, is directed by Mira Nair, who has straddled world cinema with such memorable films as Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Nair has had a home in Kampala for the past 27 years and is the founder of Maisha Film Lab, a film school for East Africans.
In a press statement, Nair says the role of Harriet was written for Lupita, who she has known for years.
“I thought of Harriet as a young Mother Courage, and that is the strength and beauty that is in Lupita,” says Nair.
Lupita was an intern at Nair’s production company Mirabai Films in New York before she shot to fame with 12 Years a Slave. The actress had reportedly broken down and cried after reading just 10 pages of the script of Queen of Katwe.
“It was the first time in a while that I’d been so enlivened, inspired and challenged by a role I was considering,” says Nyong’o.
In its review of the film, The New York Times, said: “The sight of well-fed, well-dressed schoolboys beaten by a girl — a poor girl, at that — would be satisfying even if Queen of Katwe were a less vivid and engaging movie.”
In the interim leading up to the film, Lupita had also essayed roles in Non-Stop with Liam Neeson, The Jungle Book and played the voice of 1,000-year-old space pirate Maz Kanata in Star Wars: A Force Awakens, which released winter 2015.
And there have been other ‘appearances’. Lupita recently posted a video on her Instagram account showing off her freestyle-rapping skills, much to the mirth of her 3.1 million followers.
Lupita is also the Global Elephant Ambassador for WildAid, a wildlife conservation group focusing on protecting animals from being poached.
While Kenya banned the ivory trade over 20 years ago, WildAid says close to 33,000 elephants are killed annually in Africa for ivory. Lupita joined WildAid, for the campaign ‘Poaching Steals from Us All’, in July 2015, to advocate the protection and survival of elephants. It’s a role she takes seriously.
WildAid CEO Peter Knights says it has been amazing working with the star.
“Lupita is such a powerful presence on-screen, and this power has translated so beautifully to this campaign. She is truly passionate and committed to saving Africa’s elephants,” says Knights to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
Lupita had recently also gone back to her roots in Kenya for the October cover of Vogue. Needless to say, the 33-year-old Yale School of Drama graduate is leaving a trail as the beacon of hope for other young women in her country.
Moses Wafula, the principal of St. Mary’s School Nairobi, where Lupita was a student, calls her the school’s “heroine”.
“St. Mary’s School is very proud of Lupita. It’s a joy even to us who have ridden in the fame she has brought to the institution. Her success is a brand to our school and thence, many students have joined this institution since her Oscars’ triumph,” he says.
Attests Vivian Onano, an activist and youth ambassador for UN Women, who hails from Kisumu county in Kenya where Lupita is also from: “Lupita is a great role model and an inspiration for many young African women, me included. Despite her success, she has maintained her authenticity and stayed grounded. She has boldly showed us that you don’t have to conform to Hollywood’s definition of beauty to be successful in the global space. She acknowledges her roots and has used her platform to create opportunities for other young ladies who aspire to be like her.”
Kenyan photographer Lyndsey McIntyre, who knew Lupita before she became famous, was invited by the actress to a film she had produced on albinism, a subject McIntyre says Lupita is passionate about.
“The documentary was incredible… She always had that star quality about her even years ago but was humble, intelligent and very charming. I have no doubt Lupita is still humble and charming, she is just one of those types of people I think will manage to keep her feet on the ground,” she says.
“Like most people who acquire that level of recognition, she is exceptional, a one in a million. She has many gifts — her beauty, her intellect, her tremendous talent and her lovely personality but she was also privileged in her upbringing and studied her craft in the US when she was signed by obviously an excellent agent. She was not plucked out of a village in rural Kenya or even out of Nairobi,” says McIntyre.
In Kenya, Lupita’s parents have a reputation of their own. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, is a professor of political science and senator of Kisumu county. Onano, who knows Lupita’s mother Dorothy (see interview on previous page), calls her: “A quiet lady though a great force and a doer; a very beautiful woman full of grace and a big heart.”
It’s the same grace and creative zest Lupita brings. Her hairstylist Vernon François, who created the brown and blue head wrap for her interview on American talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live in September, tells FORBES WOMAN AFRICA working with Lupita is a fantastic creative process.
“We have a very productive relationship because we are both always full of ideas and collaborate well. Selecting the material for every head wrap that I design for her, is always a team effort between Lupita, her stylist and myself,” he says.
Fans can now look forward to Lupita playing Nakia in Marvel’s Black Panther, which will cast her with The Walking Dead’s Gurira; the film’s expected to be released in 2018.
She is also in the upcoming much-awaited film adaptation of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book Americanah.
Africa is watching.
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<h2>‘She Will Continue To Break Through Ceilings For People of Color’</h2>
<div id="attachment_32006" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32006" class="wp-image-32006 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-1024x871.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="871" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-1024x871.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-300x255.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-600x511.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543-768x653.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-476081543.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />SANTA MONICA, CA- MARCH 01: Actress Lupita Nyong&#8217;o (R) and mother Dorothy Nyong&#8217;o attend the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards at Santa Monica Beach on March 1, 2014 in Santa Monica, California.(Photo by Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)</div>
<h4>Lupita’s mother, Dorothy Nyong’o, is an advocate for women and girls and whose work with the Africa Cancer Foundation speaks for itself. Known in Kenya for her commitment to cancer patients and cancer research, she also owns a public relations firm, 7th Sense Communications:</h4>
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<h4>Do you travel often with Lupita?</h4>
I occasionally travel to meet Lupita at work. She takes her work very seriously. She has a very high work ethic and does whatever is necessary to give it her very best. At the same time, she likes to enjoy her work. She is playful and builds in enjoyment of the process and of the moment. She has always done so.
<h4>How do think Kenyans have responded to Lupita’s success?</h4>
Kenyans generally own Lupita’s success. They have personal pride in her achievements and feel she belongs to them. They are inspired by her and have a lot of goodwill towards her. She is a good role model for many. People often ask me, ‘how is our daughter?’
<h4>What do you think the future entails for her in Africa?</h4>
Lupita is already a role model in Africa and worldwide. She is an influencer and a leader in her craft. She will continue to break through real and imaginary ceilings for people of color and for women all over the world. She will continue to create opportunities for Africans and people of color, worldwide.
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Queen Bee!

Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, 33, grew up in Nairobi before studying film and theater at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. Her father, Peter, is a politician who has spoken of being harassed and tortured for his beliefs. In 2014, Nyong’o won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Here, she talks fame, and how childhood readied her for it:
Being uncomfortable with sudden fame is nothing to be ashamed of. It can be trying and confusing. Being cast in 12 Years a Slave completely altered the architecture of my life. I had come straight out of school and everything seemed to change overnight. Suddenly there was all this recognition. It still surprises me when people know who I am.
If I look calm, it’s probably because I’m terrified. Human beings have three reactions to stress – fight, flight or freeze – and my default is to freeze. If that comes across as calmness, I’m lucky.
I have a lot to thank television for. As a child in Kenya, it presented me with a window to the world. I was exposed to different cultures through shows from England, Australia, Brazil, Mexico. TV taught me what it means to be human.
In my family, looking good is a sign of respect. You should take time to present yourself well for an occasion. I grew up with so much grooming that, after a while, I got sick of it and cut off all my hair.
My tempestuous nature has served me well. As an actor, I can play the storm as well as the eye of the storm. It is very damaging to have only one notion of beauty. My teenage years were plagued by the idea that light skin was better skin. There were adverts on TV about a woman trying to get a job and she only got it when she applied skin-lightening cream. I felt that I was not considered beautiful because of my complexion. My self-worth was deeply compromised in those years.
What you wear has to stand the test of time. You need clean lines and maybe a bit of humor, too.
My childhood prepared me for this life in more ways than I could have imagined. I witnessed my father navigating life as a public figure and also just being my dad. He was on the cover of the newspaper and everyone was talking about him in an abstract manner in my presence. Then I would go home to a very real man who was tired and needed a back rub. I grew up meeting world leaders and, as such, I have always known that incredible people are also very normal people.
Throw a seed over your shoulder and it will grow. At least, in East Africa it will. I miss eating the seeds from the baobab trees.
The most important thing to instil in a child is curiosity. Going to college was never a question. I was born expected to achieve. But I found school to be a very narrow experience, having to cram in all this theoretical and literary information. I learn through story and experience. If it weren’t for my parents, who were very liberal, I think I would have given up on myself.
Stand up for what you believe in. I’ve witnessed my father stand in the line of fire for his causes. He has sacrificed a lot for his beliefs and my family has had to stand by him and support his calling.
Don’t get me started on self-righteousness. The idea that how you see the world is the only way the world can be is so annoying. Eat deep-fried food. In Kenya, we deep-fry anything. There’s a snack called chevdo, which is a mix of deep-fried potatoes, peas, raisins and cashews. There’s a fruit that’s really good for you – higher in calcium than milk – but we fry it up with red spice before we eat it. It’s heavenly.

Celebrities Visit SiriusXM – September 26, 2016

Lupita Nyong’o:  What I’ve Learned

Time may have aged the face that conned millions, in a cloud of fraudulent cheques, but Frank Abagnale is as sharp and up-to-the-minute as ever on the shady world of fraud.
Abagnale, one of the world’s best known imposters, reckons that technology makes it a thousand times easier to be a conman.
“Today, I would have stolen $20 million easily. Back then, for me to produce a cheque would require a great deal of skill and time. Today, in just a few minutes, you can design a cheque on your laptop, go to a company’s website, check their logo and put it on a cheque. Capture the bank’s logo and put it on a cheque, and if you get a copy of the company’s annual report, on page three is a signature of the chairman of the board,” says Abagnale.
His smooth, charming tone that fooled bank tellers all over the world, assures me that Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of him in the movie Catch Me If You Can has nothing on the real Frank Abagnale story in the 1960s.
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“I was 16 years old when I ran away from a broken home. The judge told me I had to choose between my mother and father (who had just divorced) and I ran away and ended up in the streets of New York City,” says Abagnale.
Out on the streets, his first task was to appear older. Abagnale altered his driver’s licence to make himself 10 years older. That was the first step to writing about $2.5 million in bad cheques before he was 21.
In this, Abagnale impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, a lawyer and a university lecturer before being caught by the French police. The newspapers called him the Skyway Man as he used his pilot guise to fly for free on his way to paper the world with dud cheques. There was time in French and Swedish prisons before extradition to the United States, where he was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison; he served four.
“When I was 26, the government offered to take me out of prison on the condition that I go work for them for the rest of my sentence, until my parole expired. I agreed and now I have spent about four decades with the FBI in Washington DC,” he says.
Abagnale is a world expert on fraud who now lectures and consults for financial institutions, corporations and government agencies around the world. He mentions Russia and China as hotspots for cybercrime.
Nigeria is also on Abagnale’s list. He talks about how Nigerian conmen have progressed.
“Twenty years ago, Nigerians had all these scams where they’d write these letters with counterfeited postage stamps and they’d send thousands of them out hoping for 1 or 2 percent response. Today there is no letters. They send out millions of emails and all they have to do is hope that less than 1 percent responds to their emails and they’re going to make millions of dollars.”
Abagnale warns that the most common Nigerian email, right now, is from the ‘internal revenue office’ stating that the recipient owes taxes that need to be paid back within five days. When the recipient calls to enquire, they inform them that they can pay immediately using their credit cards, hoping people will hand over their numbers.
”When one thing wears out and people get used to that, they just come up with another idea,” says Abagnale.
Even Facebook and Twitter can be tools in cybercrime.
“If you’re on Facebook and you display when you were born and have a portrait style picture of yourself, I’m 98% [on my way to] stealing your identity. There’s technology called PittPatt which allows me to take your picture at the airport and in 7.5 seconds I’ll be at your Facebook page through facial recognition from the photo on your Facebook. Now if we have it, criminals have that technology as well,” says Abagnale.
With all the information criminals can find on Facebook alone, it would be wise to play it safe, he says.
According to Abagnale, it’s wiser to alter your date of birth slightly on social media platforms.
“I would never put a straight photograph of myself on social media. I’d post a picture of me with a group of friends or me playing tennis or volleyball or some sport activity where it’s not a straight on photograph.”
Wise words from a sharp-eyed, smooth talking, poacher turned gamekeeper.

Con Me  If You Can

And the Oscar for best supporting actress goes to…”
The camera panned across five nervous nominees: Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle; June Squibb for Nebraska; Julia Roberts for August: Osage County, Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine and newcomer, Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave.
Last year’s best supporting actor, Christoph Waltz, was on stage at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles at Hollywood’s night of the year – the 86th Academy Awards.
Lawrence was also a favorite for her role of Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle, but it was not to be. In a blaze of emotion, up stepped a daughter of Kenya. It was March 2, 75 years after Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Academy Award for her role in Gone With The Wind. In more than seven decades, a mere seven black women have won in either the Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress categories; and only three hailed from Africa.
“Lupita Nyong’o is already an African icon, not just for what she has achieved with her remarkable win at the Academy Awards, but more importantly for what she has almost overnight come to symbolize, the undeniable truth that African women are increasingly charting their own course,” says Biola Alabi, Managing Director of M-Net in Africa.
“Here is a beautiful black woman, comfortable in her own skin, clearly highly educated, who can champion the next generation of African talent; she is a blessing to Kenya and the continent and long may she prosper. From where I sit, it is an absolute truth that the lead performances were Kenyan and Nigerian – I know its trendy to call Chiwetel Ejiofor black British but he is an Ibo boy and we claim him. However, perhaps African countries can begin to understand and appreciate the nobility of the higher arts of song, dance, theater and film and invest and support them… I would have loved to see her shout out Kenya and say something in Swahili but, hey, you can’t have it all,” says entrepreneur Obi Asika, the Chairman of Social Media Week Lagos.
What a difference six months makes. Back then, 31-year-old Nyong’o was a struggling unknown in Hollywood who lived lean and carried her own clothes.
The role that was to change her life, cast her alongside London-born Nigerian, Ejiofor, in a film based on the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup – the tale of a free man kidnapped into slavery.
Steve McQueen cast Nyong’o three weeks before she graduated from Yale School of Drama, after a chance audition in New York. Her manager had the script ready for another client, but when Nyong’o was asked to read, McQueen was keen on her playing Patsey. It went to a second audition with the casting director.
“It was a one-hour, very grueling audition. Then I was shortlisted and invited to Louisiana to audition with Steve about two weeks later. So it was three auditions in three different states,” she says.
Filled with excitement she phoned her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, a professor back in Nairobi, to tell him the news that she was going to be in a film with Brad Pitt.
“My father said he had never heard of him, but he was glad I had finally got a job,” says Nyong’o.
It has been a long and winding journey that began in the gentle world of amateur dramatics. It was with the Pheonix Players in Nairobi that Nyong’o took her first tender steps in Shakespeare.
Drama teacher, Ian Mbugua, who ran the Phoenix Players for 19 years, remembers it well.
“Lupita first came to us as a student from Rusinga School. She was brought by her father Professor Anyang’ Nyong’o who had obviously seen her talent. Nyongo and his wife Dorothy were very supportive of the theater and used to bring young Lupita to productions. He left her in the capable hands of James Falkland who put her as Juliet alongside George Mumbai, who played Romeo,” says Mbugua.
“Needless to say she gave a sterling performance… I was very impressed by her parent’s support. At a time when parents wanted their kids to study medicine, law, engineering, the Nyongos supported her dream to be an actress. She always approached rehearsals and performances with the seriousness they deserved. She was very eloquent and had wonderful stage presence. She was a passionate actress. Off-stage she had a great sense of humor and was always quick to laugh.”
“We remember how brilliantly she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Phoenix Theatre, at the age of 14 years; how she cracked our ribs during St. Mary’s School plays, or at the British High Commission, when as a teenager, she played Natalya in Anton Chekhov’s The Proposal,” says her mother, Dorothy Nyong’o.
Nyong’o emigrated to the United States 10 years ago, where she earned a degree in film and theater studies from Hampshire College. In her summer break, she headed back to Africa where she worked on the production crew of Mira Nair’s The Namesake. In another Nairobi summer, she served as a production assistant on the set of The Constant Gardener starring Ralph Fiennes.
“Ralph Fiennes was a pivotal influence on me,” she told the New York Post. “He asked me, ‘So what is it you want to do?’ I very shyly, timidly admitted I wanted to be an actor. He sighed, and said, ‘Lupita, only be an actor if you feel there is nothing else in the world you want to do – only do it if you feel you cannot live without acting.’”
The second of six children, Nyong’o was born in Mexico City, where her father, a politician in Kenya, had fled to following the disappearance of his brother in difficult political times. The Nyong’o family hails from the Luo people in western Kenya, like Barack Obama’s father. When Nyong’o was less than a year old, her parents moved back to Kenya, where her father is now a senator representing Kisumu County; her mother is the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation. Her parents sent her back to Mexico, at the age of 16, to learn Spanish.
Fast forward to the Oscars, Nyong’o, who sports short kinky hair and a pale blue Prada dress, a color she says reminds her of Nairobi, picked up the award for one of the great moments in movie history. The moment when the sadistic cotton plantation owner Edwin Epps, played by Michael Fassbender, whips Patsey near to death; when it becomes unbearable, he forces her friend Solomon to take over.
“It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s, and so I want to salute the spirit of Patsey for her guidance,” says a tearful Nyong’o on Oscar night.
What is next for Kenya’s first Oscar winner? Her next role is in a thriller set on an international flight, with Liam Neeson, that opened in February. It is likely to sell well in Nairobi where a whole new generation of young Kenyan actresses are learning their lines for the amateur stage with one eye on Lupita and the other on the future.

Tag: Movie

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