Lord Boateng’s title for the thirtieth annual Marlborough Brandt Lecture (in the College’s Memorial Hall on Thursday, May 3) tells us a great deal about his connections with Africa, both past and present: Africa – from Poverty to Prosperity – beyond the Millennium Development Goals.
Paul Boateng spent his early years in Ghana. When his father was caught up in a coup against President Nkrumah and jailed, the family fled to London. He became a lawyer and was elected as the Labour MP for Brent South in 1987. In 2002 he became Britain’s first black cabinet minister.
In 2005 he left government to be High Commissioner to South Africa. Now he’s an active member of the House of Lords and works as a lawyer in emerging markets – such as Africa. He was also the Prime Minister’s special representative for the Africa Commission.
But his present links with Africa go much further. When Marlborough News Online met Lord Boateng in London he was leaving the next day for Somalia.
There he has a “serious engagement” in helping the formerly British part of the country establish its legislature – part of an EU funded programme. He is advising them how they might form their upper chamber – how their clan chiefs can be involved. As an active member of the British upper chamber, he knows about the role ‘clan chiefs’ can find for themselves.
Advice is one thing, but he is convinced that when it comes to the debate about further development goals, the South must be allowed to lead. “The old notion was that we or the international banks could deliver.”
At a recent meeting of African Finance Ministers, Lord Boateng was told very clearly all that had changed and now Africa and the other nations of the poorer South must call the tune. Anyway, as he says, “Africa increasingly looks to the east – and we in the west have to establish our own relevance – we now have to write our own relationship with the South.”
Lord Boateng works for several different companies involved in development in Africa. Foremost is Aegis the private security and risk management company. He’s a non-executive director and advisor.
He sees this company as a major aid to investment in “difficult markets”, with boots on the ground to “Advise on how not to fall foul of local anti-bribery legislation, on personal and plant protection and how to relate to the local community and make friends of the local community.”
He is also an advisor to Gilead Sciences a huge United States based drug company which was foremost in providing low cost generic drugs for HIV-Aids. He also works with the Swiss company 4G Africa which is providing broadband wireless and mobile networks in sub-Saharan Africa.
Oh, and he’s just become a Governor of the London School of Economics.
However strongly Lord Boateng feels that the nations of the South should design the next phase of development goals, he does, unsurprisingly, have ideas of his own.
He believes that sound agriculture and strong science and technology are essential to economic growth. And he is critical of the obsession in some development policies with primary education: “No economy can flourish on primary education alone.”
And he warns South Africa that they cannot go on with policies that have led to there being less land under cultivation than in the Apartheid years and fewer people in education, especially learning maths, than under Apartheid.
And then we got round to the Jubilee and the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth. Lord Boateng is a “great believer” in the Commonwealth as a forum for business development. And he lauds the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association as being very influential in improving the standards of governance.
He’s a realist who remains an optimist – and the next round of development goals can be decisive in spreading that optimism far and wide across the South and be another “programme for survival”, just like Willy Brandt’s 1980 report North-South: a Programme for Survival.
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Lord Boateng’s lecture will start at 8.00 pm in Marlborough College’s Memorial Hall. He is being introduced by Lord Joffe, onetime human rights lawyer and a member of Nelson Mandela’s defence team at the 1953 Rivonia trial. Joel Joffe will be signing copies of his book about the trial The State vs Nelson Mandela – the trial that changed South Africa immediately after the lecture.
Admission is free. There will be a gift aided retirement collection for the Marlborough Brandt Group.