Nigeria’s former minister, Professor Ibrahim Gambari and Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State has been has been appointed by Oxford University, which is the mother of all universities across the globe. They were appointed to serve in the International Advisory Board of their African studies centre.
Nigeria Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo will inaugurate the Advisory Board on Twelve (12) October at St Antony’s college, oxford. Some prominent African leaders who are also working in governance, industries, businesses, finance, diplomacy, academy and art. Also, Osinbajo will deliver educative lectures based on “Africa Challenges of human development in the twenty first century”
The board is charged with merging the center with other global and local institutions and organizations in Africa and also raising funds to provide scholarships and fellowships for African students and scholars in order to study and research in Oxford University.
The program is headed by South African economist and former Governor of South African Reserve Bank, Mr. Tito Mboweni who has also served as Labour Minister during President Nelson Mandela’s regime. Currently, he is serving as International adviser for Goldman Sachs.
A statement issued and signed by Marta Mas I Serra, Administrator, African Studies Centre, Oxford, UK, said the Oxford advisory board also includes the First Lady of Namibia, Madame Monica Geingos, a lawyer who chaired the Namibian Presidential Economic Advisory Council and has worked with the Namibian Stock Exchange; Mr. Gareth Ackerman, Chairman of Pick’ n Pay, the second largest multi-billion-dollar supermarket in South Africa, relating with many countries in Africa, including Nigeria. Dr. Charlotte Harland-Scott, the British-born former First Lady of Zambia and former Chief of Social Policy and Economic Analysis for UNICEF; Mr. Alex Duncan who is a British-South African Director of Policy Practice and former consulting economist with the UN-FAO, the World Bank and Oxford Policy Management; Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Ghanaian economic development specialist, literary anthologist of fiction and non-fiction works, and currently Visiting Scholar at the University of Johannesburg; and Ms. Linda Mabhena-Olagunju, Founder and Managing Director, DLO Energy Resources Group, an independent power producer in South Africa. Ms Mabhena-Olagunju has been acknowledged by Oprah Winfrey and Forbes magazine as among the 20 Most Powerful Women in Africa.
Oxford University, which is getting to One Thousand years old, has educated some of the most industrious people in the world including twenty nine Nobel laureates, twenty seven prime ministers of the United Kingdom, and many heads of state and government around the world and nationalist leaders in Africa including former President John Kufour of Ghana, Chief Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who led the Biafran succession bid in Nigeria and Mr Tom Mboya, the Kenyan nationalist and trade union leader.
Oxford University contributes Seven pont one billion pounds annually to the global economy.
It is commendable that a Nigerian, in the person of Professor Raufu Mustapha , who died in August twenty seventeen was the first black African to be appointed into a tenured teaching position in Oxford’s history. Professor Wale Adebanwi was also appointed by Oxford university as the first black to be awarded with their most distinguished chairs known as “Professorship In Race Relations”.
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