Who is Africa's preferred UK premier?

Gordon Brown looks dour, humourless, and a tad too serious. His younger opponent, the Conservative Party’s David Cameroon, is the exact opposite. Flashy, media-savvy, a bit too slick Aside from the good looks and the flashing smile, there is gnawing suspicion he is more dash than substance.

Britain is now set to choose who between the two should be their prime minister. The date for the elections has now been set for May 6, just four short weeks away. It doesn’t speak well of the frivolity of today’s media-hyped politics that the guy with the dash may actually get voted in. But if Kenya and Africa were to join the voting, there would be no doubt whatsoever as to their preference.

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It was on a visit to Tanzania in 2005 when Mr Brown, then the Chancellor of Britain’s Exchequer, cancelled all of Tanzania’s bilateral debt to Britain and promised to do the same with the poorest of the world’s poor. His actual pledge was that he was ready to pay a whopping 10 per cent of the poor world’s debt bill. He wanted Britain’s fellow rich-world clubmates – the US, Japan, Germany and France – to promise the same. They have largely failed to do so.

Mr Brown’s upbringing in a family of devout Scottish Presbyterians forms the basis of his moral compass. It is this compass that explains his consistent political identification with the underdog and the poor. When Britain hosted the Gleneagles G-20 meeting in 2005, he pushed Prime Minister Tony Blair to make the drive against global poverty the centerpiece of the agenda.

Becoming prime minister in 2007, he did not relent on this crusade, though domestic politics and muted interest from fellow creditor countries have greatly hobbled his vision.

Of course, Mr Brown is not just a woolly-minded idealist. Prosperity in the Third World helps Britain to prosper too. That way she can sell more of her products there. It should be remembered that Britain relies on its ex-colonies’ markets to a degree countries like, say, the US or Germany don’t.