Brenthurst Foundation

The Brenthurst Foundation is a Johannesburg-based think-tank established by the Oppenheimer family in 2004 to support the Brenthurst Initiative in seeking ways to fund African development and to organize conferences on African competitiveness.

Description
The Foundation was created to build on the Oppenheimers' Brenthurst Initiative of August 2003. The Initiative was designed to instigate a debate in South Africa around policy strategies to achieve higher rates of economic expansion.

Today the Foundation now has a wider African focus and aims to find ways to draw the investment needed for "continental regeneration and prosperity". The organisation intends to make a worthwhile contribution to economic growth in Africa by creating an environment conducive to positive economic change in order to strengthen the importance of Africa in the global market. It works to set up government policy platforms for economic development through organising high-level governmental dialogues, supporting economic and political research on topical and important issues, and disseminating practical policy advice to relevant actors. The organisation has been described as a frontier of knowledge for strengthening Africa’s economic performance.

The Foundation has been active in a range of roles in various countries across the continent, including in Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Zanzibar, Malawi, Lesotho, Somaliland, Sudan, Rwanda, Mozambique, Mali, Eswatini, Morocco, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Ethiopia.

The Foundation also organises regular policy study-tours for its African partners to a number of countries. These aim to expose African opinion-formers to development 'best practice'. These trips have included participation by officials up to the prime-ministerial level, and incorporated meetings with current and former heads of state. Countries visited in the past include: Vietnam (2007, 2009, 2011), Singapore (2008 and 2009), Cambodia (2011), Panama (2009), Colombia (2009 and 2014), Costa Rica (2009), El Salvador (2009) and Morocco (2008 and 2019) and Poland (2023).

The Foundation publishes op-ed articles and discussion papers on matters related to growth and security and hosts election monitoring missions in Africa. It also conducts opinion surveys on key policy matters and on election attitudes.

People
Advisory Board The Brenthurst Foundation Advisory Board comprises a number of eminent and notable government officials, academics, and business leaders. It is chaired by Olusegun Obasanjo, the former President of Nigeria. Other members of the Board include Jonathan Oppenheimer, the Foundation's Director, Dr Greg Mills, Deputy Chair to Commission to the African Union Erastus Mwencha, Former Prime Minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn, Former President of Liberia and Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Professor INCAE Alberto Trejos, Former Minister of the Economy in Argentina Alfonso de Prat Gay, Counsellor to H.M. King Mohammed VI in Morocco André Azoulay, Greek Politician and Public Figure Anna Diamantopoulou, Member of the Presidential Council on Minority Rights in Singapore Barry Desker, Former President of Sierra Leone Ernest Bai Koroma, Former Ambassador of Colombia to the United States Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno, Managing Partner of the Africa Legal Network Karim Anjarwalla, Former President of South Africa Kgalema Motlanthe, Former Deputy Minister of Finance in South Africa Mcebisi Jonas, Former Chief of Defence in the United Kingdom Nick Carter, Former United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, Former Secretary of State for International Development of the United Kingdom Rory Stewart and Ambassador of the Kingdom of Denmark to South Africa Torben Brylle.

Associates

The Brenthurst Foundation benefits from the knowledge and expertise of a wide range of scholars, policy-makers and experts from all over the world.

Books
The Brenthurst Foundation has published an array of books since 2004 including:

In the Name of the People: How Populism is Rewiring the World (October 2022)

Better Choices: Ensuring South Africa's Future (September 2022)

The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan (December 2021)

Expensive Poverty: Why Aid Fails and How it Can Work (October 2021)

The Asian Aspiration: Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia (March 2020)

Vital Signs: Health Security in South Africa (January 2020)

Democracy Works: Re-Wiring Politics to Africa's Advantage (January 2019)

Making Africa Work: A Handbook for Economic Success (May 2017)

A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence (November 2015)

How South Africa Works - And Must do Better (March 2015)

Why States Recover: Changing Walking Societies into Winning Nations, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (October 2014)

Somalia - Fixing Africa's Most Failed State (March 2013)

Africa's Third Liberation (November 2012)

On the Fault Line: Managing Tensions and Divisions within Societies (March 2012)

Why Africa is Poor: And What Africans Can Do About It (January 2012)

Victory Among People: Lessons from Countering Insurgency and Stabilising Fragile States (February 2011)

From Africa to Afghanistan: With Richards and NATO to Kabul (August 2007)

Big African States: Angola, DRC, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan (November 2006)

Tswalu Dialogue
The annual Tswalu Dialogue meeting series was established in 2002 as a premier African forum to discuss issues of concern to continental development and security. Hosted by Jonathan Oppenheimer at the Tswalu Kalahari Game Reserve in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert, the Tswalu Dialogue has involved active collaboration between a variety of international partners. Attended by a mix of policy-makers, analysts, academia, civil and military personnel, media and businesspeople, the Tswalu Dialogues remains an annual event.

The Gdansk Declaration
From 21-23 June 2023, the European Solidarity Centre and The Brenthurst Foundation staged a conference on 'Rolling Back Authoritarianism' in Gdańsk, Poland, the epicentre of political change in Poland and in Europe in the late 1980s. The event was attended by more than 50 leaders from Africa, Latin America, Poland and the Baltic States. At the end of the event, the Gdańsk Declaration was adopted unanimously. It lays out the commitment of all delegates to ending authoritarianism and introducing democracy, accountability and transparency.

The event was held at the historic Gdańsk shipyard where the tide turned against authoritarianism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nobel laureate Lech Walesa, who led the shipyard uprising and later became President of Poland, addressed the meeting and signed the declaration along with 57 other leaders. Ukrainian Nobel laureate, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of Centre for Civil Liberties, also signed the declaration.