This episode was originally broadcast as a live webinar on 6 October 2020
Moderated by:
Joel Kibazo – Former Spokesperson and Director of Communications & Public Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat. Joel is a partner at London Based consultancy JK Associates, and his career has spanned the world of journalism, broadcasting and diplomacy as well as business. He was Managing Director for Africa at international business and communications consultancy FTI Consulting, Director of External Relations & Communications at the African Development Bank, and Official Spokesperson and Director of Communications & Public Affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat. For 12 years Joel was a journalist at the (London) Financial Times. He also worked extensively in broadcasting, reporting and presenting programmes for BBC radio and television as well as other broadcasters.
On the panel:
Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda. Prime Minister Browne is also the Minister of Finance, Corporate Governance and Public Private Partnerships. He became an elected member of Parliament in 1999 representing the constituency of St. John’s City West and has been re-elected in four subsequent general elections. In 2012, he was elected as Leader of the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party which he steered to victory in General Elections in 2014, becoming Prime Minister, and then again in March 2018, increasing its representation in Parliament. On becoming Prime Minister, the Caribbean Heads of Government appointed him to have lead responsibility for financial matters, cricket, aviation and de-risking in the quasi Cabinet of CARICOM.
Nondumiso Hlophe – Queen’s Young Leader and Commonwealth Young Achiever. Noni is the Founding Curator and Director of the Global Shapers Community: Mbabane Hub, a registered youth-led Non Profit Organisation in the Kingdom of Eswatini. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science Honours degree in Political and International Studies from Rhodes University. Impassioned by quality education and gender equality, her work in policy is driven by the desire to see both achieved. Noni was named an inaugural Queen’s Young Leader by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and a Commonwealth Young Achiever in 2015. She was named a policy influencer on SADC’s Top 100 Youth list in 2018 and is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
Rt. Hon. Sir Donald McKinnon – Former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, and one time New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister and longest serving Foreign Minister. Sir Donald is also the Chair of the New Zealand China Council, Chair of the Aspen Institute New Zealand, and Chair of the New Zealand War Memorial Trust Le Quesnoy. He is a recipient of New Zealand’s Highest award, the Order of NZ, and of The Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order from Her Majesty The Queen.
Professor Philip Murphy – Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS), and Professor of British and Commonwealth History at the University of London. Philip’s first book, ‘Party Politics and Decolonization’ (1995), was a study of the Conservative party and British withdrawal from Africa. He has subsequently published a biography of the British Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd (1999), the Central Africa volume in the series British Documents on the End of Empire (2005) and a study of the relationship between the British royal family and the Commonwealth, ‘Monarchy and the End of Empire’ (2013). His latest book, ‘The Empire’s New Clothes: The Myth of the Commonwealth’, was published by Hurst in 2018. He is also joint editor of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Alongside British Imperial History, he also has a long-standing interest in intelligence history, and in international intelligence links.