Zeinab Badawi

Broadcaster and Trustee,
BBC World Service Trust

Stephen King

BBC World Service Trust

Louis Michel

European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid

Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu

Former Chairman, New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)

Alhaji Bamanga Tukur

Exec. President, African Business Roundtable Chairman, NEPAD Business Group

Paul Walsh (Chair)

CEO, Diageo plc

Tim Sebastian

Broadcast Journalist

Baroness Shriti Vadera

Minister for Business and Competitiveness


Baroness Shriti Vadera


Shriti Vadera is Minister for Business and Competitiveness in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, UK. Her portfolio includes all aspects of business issues and better regulation. For seven months before that she was a Minister at the Department of International Development.

Prior to that she spent eight years on the Council of Economic Advisers, HM Treasury and as an adviser to Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. She advised on business and city issues and worked on policies to increase productivity, enterprise and innovation in the economy to maintain our competitiveness in the face of increased globalisation.

She was a trustee of the international development charity, Oxfam, from 2000 - 2005 and also advised Gordon Brown on international development. She has worked on debt relief since the early 90s, the 2005 Gleneagles agenda, Education for All and the global immunisation initiative targeted to save five million children’s lives in the next 10 years.

She started her career in the City with 14 years at investment bank S.G Warburg (UBS). She has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford and spent her childhood in Uganda and India.