Ghanaian-British Kwasi Kwarteng is UK’s first Black Chancellor of the Exchequer
On September 6, 2022, Ghanaian British politician, Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng was named United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, under the administration of Britain’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss.
The 47 year-old British born is a UK Conservative Party member and served as the Member of Parliament for Spelthorne in northern Surrey, UK, since 2010.
He succeeds Kurdish-American Nadhim Zahawi as Chancellor, who in turn succeeded Rishi Sunak, an Indian, and Sajid Javid, a Pakistani. An appointment line intended to represent a more diverse side of the Conservative party.
As the government’s chief financial minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in charge of managing public spending as well as generating money through taxes and borrowing. He is ultimately in charge of the Treasury’s operations.
Kwasi is the only child of Ghanaian immigrants Alfred K. Kwarteng and Charlotte Boaitey-Kwarteng, who had left their home country as students in the 1960s. He was born in the London Borough of Waltham Forest in 1975.
His father works as an economist in the Commonwealth Secretariat, while his mother is a barrister.
He attended Trinity College in Cambridge, studying history and the classics before attending Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship. In 2000, he received a PhD in economic history from Cambridge University.
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Kwasi held a position as a financial services analyst prior to entering politics. He worked as a financial analyst at JPMorgan Chase and other investment firms in addition to writing columns for The Daily Telegraph.
In 2011, Bloomsbury published his book, Ghosts of Empire, which he authored about the British Empire’s legacy. In the same year he and Jonathan Dupont also co-wrote the book Gridlock Nation, which examined the reasons behind and remedies for traffic congestion in Britain.
After becoming a Conservative Member of Parliament in 2010, he was also selected as a Transport Select Committee from 2010 to 2013. From that year to 2015, he became a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.
Kwasi joined the Public Accounts Committee in October 2016 and served on it until May 2017.
In 2015, Leader of the House of Lords appointed Kwasi as his Parliamentary Private Secretary, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer nominated him as his Parliamentary Private Secretary in 2017.
Between 8 January 2021 to 6 September 2022, he served as Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy.
Prior to this, he served Minister of State (Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change).
From 16 November 2018 to 24 July 2019, Kwasi served as the Department for Exiting the European Union’s Parliamentary Under Secretary of State.
Friends have described Kwarteng as being “intensely private” and an academic. In December 2019, he wed solicitor Harriet Edwards, and their daughter was born on October 15, 2021.
In January, he was listed in the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2021, issued by the continent’s top pan-African, London-based journal, New African Magazine.
Source: News Agencies
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Abeeb Lekan Sodiq is a Managing Editor & Writer at theafricandream.net. He is as well a Graphics Designer and also known as Arakunrin Lekan.
