Jeremy Hunt is to start a five-day, five-nation tour of Africa that will give the foreign secretary a chance both to push his personal agenda ahead of an expected Conservative leadership election and try to convince Africa that Brexit will bring trade benefits.
Hunt will begin his tour on Monday in Senegal before travelling to Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya, which have five of the fastest-growing economies on the continent.
Apart from pushing post-Brexit trade links, Hunt is expected to highlight aspects of his personal Foreign Office (FCO) agenda, including highlighting the persecution of Christians, developing media freedom as a bulwark for nascent democracies and the link between climate change and threats to security, including mass migration.
He is also expected to highlight English language training, the source of his own substantial private wealth.
As health secretary he gained a multimillion-pound windfall with the sale of Hotcourses, an English language listings site he established. He stepped down from an active role in 2011 when he became an MP. He used some of the income from the site to set up a foundation in eastern Kenya that runs a primary school for 300 Aids orphans and support the education of another 300 HIV-positive children in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
Hunt will be accompanied by his Chinese wife, Lucia Guo, whom he has described as “a great diplomatic weapon for the UK”. FCO officials welcome her on Hunt’s trips, saying she helps absorb some of his stress on such high-profile overseas visits.
In the first of a number of announcements during the trip, the FCO has announced £4m extra funding for English language training in Francophone Africa, which includes Senegal, saying English was seen as the language of opportunity in Africa.
Hunt said ahead of the visit: “Africa is a continent growing at an extraordinary rate, full of transformative potential. In a future where Britain is no longer a member of the EU, I want us to work within and alongside African nations to make sure, together, we combat the threats we all face, and capitalise on the opportunities open to people wherever they live. To do this, I want to set out the stall for the UK to be the new partner of choice across Africa.”
The Conservative government has been accused of neglecting Africa in comparison with the repeated visits to the continent’s Francophone countries by Emmanuel Macron since he was elected French president. Theresa May travelled to South Africa last year, promising the UK would be the largest G7 investor in Africa by 2022.
But there has been criticism that the UK has been so distracted by Brexit that its perceived interest in Africa has declined. Both traders and aid recipients have been kept on tenterhooks waiting to see what form of Brexit the UK finally chooses. Hunt has been criticised as a former remainer for showing such strong support for Brexit, with critics accusing him of courting the heavily sceptic Tory party membership.
The trip will give him a chance to set out his views on immigration, with the UK growing increasingly concerned about the Sahel region of north-central Africa as a source of migration, deepened by the instability in Libya and the Sudan.
The anxiety has led to a revival of FCO interest in the region, symbolised by the opening of embassies in Chad and Niger, as well as expansion of the embassy in Mali.
