Ameena Gafoor lecture at Warwick University focuses on life of Dr Cheddi Jagan

A lecture titled, “Cheddi Jagan: Developmentalist and Political Visionary” was given at the University of Warwick by former Guyanese President Donald Ramotar.
The Ameena Gafoor Lecture, which was hosted last week, was focused on Dr Jagan’s fight against colonialism that propelled him unto the centre stage of international politics.
In the 1950s, Dr Jagan commanded global coverage in most countries under British rule.
So popular had he become that the American journalist, Arthur Sutton said of him that he was “one of the most personable politicians in the Western Hemisphere. From the 1950s onwards Jagan instituted a series of measures to reduce poverty and provide educational opportunities for Guyanese Elsa Hayland from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in visiting British Guiana in 1950 noted that she had rarely seen such terrible signs of malnutrition and was shocked to the bone.”
Dr Jagan himself in a newspaper article, “Eradicate Slums”, wrote about the appalling condition of housing in Georgetown, never mind the shacks in the rural sugar estates. Schools were few and diseases like gastroenteritis killed hundreds of children.

Dr Jagan encouraged communities to form self-help groups to build social and physical infrastructure. Several schools and health clinics were built using this method. The Government provided materials and technical oversight whilst the community provided the laborite number of houses built in 1957 was more than the colonial authorities had been able to build in almost a decade. Dr Jagan’s plans to greatly improve the East Coast Demerara Road as well as the Georgetown Hospital which were blocked by the colonial authorities who also stopped his attempt to industrialise the country by building a glass factory, a cooking oil factory, a canning factory, an instant coffee factory, a leather factory etc.
Plans for a hydroelectric power plant were stifled by the colonial office but Dr Jagan, however, was eventually able to create institutions like the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA), to train farmers, and the University of Guyana, to educate young people. He actively encouraged the expansion of the private sector so as to access funding. He also obtained internal and external funding to create the Bank of Guyana which started operations in 1965, a year after he was maneuvered out of office by the British and the CIA.
The annual lecture named after Ameena Gafoor was established at the University of Warwick in 2017 under the direction of Professor David Dabydeen who now heads the Ameena Gafoor Institute, with a team of distinguished scholars like Dr Maria Kaladeen, Dr Lynne Macedo, Professor Amar Wahab and Ben Jacob. Previous Lecturers include Professor Brinsley Samaroo, the doyen of Caribbean historians, Professor Patricia Mohammed (University of the West Indies) and Arlen Harris, the veteran award-winning UK television producer. The Lecture reflects and honours the humane intellectual and artistic values promoted by Ameena Gafoor in Guyana and the Caribbean over many decades.