Meet The 7 Africans Featured on Time’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ List

Father Mussie Zerai, also known as “Abba Mussie Zerai” or “Father Moses,” is a prominent Italian Roman Catholic priest recognized for his work with immigrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.

Zerai was born in 1975 in Asmara, Eritrea, where he grew up with his grandmother and seven siblings after his mother died when he was a toddler and his absentee father fled the country to Italy.

And he was also forced to flee his home country at the age of 17 due to constant harassment and oppression by the then-dictatorial government. Zerai moved to Rome, Italy, where he applied for asylum, and with the help of a British priest, he obtained a residence permit.

Zerai studied with the Scalabrinian Missionaries in Piacenza, Italy, for three years and later returned to Rome where he co-founded Agenzia Habeshia, a non-profit organization that pursues the interests of asylum seekers and refugees in Italy.

In 2015, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, a Norwegian independent research institution that focuses on peace and conflict studies, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Sir David Frank Adjaye, a renowned Ghanaian-British architect and the lead designer of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, DC, was also ranked among this year’s top 100 most influential persons.

Mr. Adjaye, the son of a Ghanaian diplomat, was born in 1966 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and later moved with his family to Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon and finally Britain. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from London South Bank University and an MA in the same field from the Royal College Art.

Last year, Adjaye was awarded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s McDermott award, a $100,000 prize for his excellence in arts. He was also recently knighted in the 2017 New Year Honors for his exceptional service in architecture.

The prestigious magazine also recognized the current chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the former Gambian Justice Minister Fatou Bensouda for her great efforts in the pursuit for justice for victims of war crimes.

Bensouda recently made headlines after she openly blasted African countries for what she termed as giving rogue African leaders a free hand “to commit genocide”. She was responding to a recent call by the African Union for African countries to leave the Hague-based court.

The “Iron Lady”, as commonly referred to, has also directed the court to consider cases from Ukraine, Iraq, Colombia, and Afghanistan.

Bensouda is currently dealing with serious cases of war crimes committed in countries such as Ivory Coast, Mali, Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, DR Congo, Kenya, Libya, among others.

A popular South African medical doctor, Glenda Gray, was also ranked among the top 100 Most Influential People for her outstanding work in the field of HIV/AIDS research. She is currently the CEO of the South African Medical Research Council.

Gray is considered one of the few people who have made tremendous contribution towards eradicating the HIV/AIDS menace in the world. She is at present involved in one of the largest HIV-vaccine studies ever to be conducted in South Africa.

Lastly, there was Biram Dah Abeid, a Mauritian politician and advocate for the abolition of slavery. Many people refer to him as the Mauritian Nelson Mandela for his exceptional fight against all forms of modern slavery.

In 2014, Abeid was named as one of the top 10 People Who Changed the World You Might Not Have Heard Of by PeaceLinkLive. He has also received numerous awards, including the Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk 2013 and the UN Human Rights Prize 2013.

Other popular individuals featured in the list include U.S. President Donald Trump, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Pope Francis, among others.