UK New Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, Stepping out 10 Downing Street, after being announced new Foreign Secretary on 5 July, 2024.jpeg
Abubakar Hashim
David Lindon Lammy, 51, is the new UK Foreign Secretary, the first of Caribbean/African heritage.
He has visited 17 countries and met with officials from 61 since he was the now-ruling Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary two years ago. He has been a Member of Parliament from Tottenham since 2,000 and held junior positions under former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gordon Brown between 2000 and 2010.
What is New for Africa?
Like former US President Barrack Obama, who is also of African origin, David Lammy is likely not to elevate Africa on the Foreign Policy watch list.
Already, his foreign policy priorities have been listed as follows:
“Prioritising Global Cooperation on Climate Change, stronger ties with the West and connecting the UK with Europe.” Africa is conspicuously left out.
Like Obama of Kenya heritage but did not offer much for Africa, Lammy is of African/Caribbean origin and is not expected to pencil Africa on his foreign policy priority list.
But who is David Lindon Lammy?
Born in 1971, he attended Harvard Law School. He represents Tottenham in the UK House of Parliament, under the UK Parliamentary system, hence qualified to become a minister.
Tall and swashbuckling, Lammy is a sound orator with dazzling diplomatic suavity.
But his African heritage, some say his great grandfather migrated from Sierra Leone to the Caribbean during the Slave Trade, is deceptive, as he prides himself a pure British and stands aloof from anything African. Some even say he “ hates African settings and culture “.
There is absolutely nothing much that is expected from the new UK Foreign Policy Chief, as he makes his first official trip tomorrow to the US for the NATO summit, together with the new UK Prine Minister, Keir Starmer.
* Abubakar Hashim is tge News Magazine West Africa Bureau Chief, based in Sierra Leone