Mandela links with Rhodes Trust to aid African education

Bill Clinton, the world's best-known Rhodes Scholar, will join Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair in London this week to celebrate 100 years of the scholarships and the establishment of a new foundation backed by the former South African president.

The three men will speak at a ceremony on Wednesday in Westminster Hall to mark the centenary of the Rhodes Trust and the start of the new Mandela Rhodes Foundation, which will use £10m of the trust's money to fund scholarships and other development programmes in Africa.

Up to 93 scholarships are awarded each year for students from the US, British Commonwealth and Germany to continue their studies at Oxford University thanks to a century-old bequest by the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes.

The former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke will be among four leading Rhodes Scholars to receive honorary degrees this week during four days of anniversary celebrations in London and Oxford.

Mr Mandela will use part of his speech to lay out the principles of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. It intends to raise another £20m and will fund programmes designed to support South African education and strengthen leadership in business, law, government and public service in Africa.

The chairman of the Rhodes Trust defended the new Mandela Rhodes initiative against critics who claim that it is being pursued at the expense of the traditional scholarship scheme when the trust's funds have been hit by falling stock market values. Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, a former Tory cabinet minister, said: "It was obviously a good time to remind ourselves where all the money came from and recommit ourselves to try to help South Africa." Some 115 former scholars have criticised the trust for using part of its funds - the capital value of which still stands at about £129m - to meet a perceived "moral obligation" to help the new South Africa. But Nicky Oppenheimer, chairman of the South African diamond mining company De Beers, said earlier this year Rhodes would have wanted to see scholars "giving something back to Africa" for the benefits they had received.

John Rowett, chief executive of the Rhodes Trust, which has started the new initiative in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said it would concentrate both on leadership and "capacity building" through scholarships for bright school pupils and would include international experience in the form of a vocational internship - a spell in a US senator's office, for example - but would be otherwise pursued in South Africa.

The initiative would also focus on the development of education in universities and schools, such as the advanced training of principals and other teachers, among the 120 already being helped in deprived areas of South Africa by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

The new foundation's executive director will be Shaun Johnson, the leading South African commentator, former Rhodes Scholar and deputy chief executive of Independent News and Media (South Africa).

Dr Rowett said the initiative was getting away from the notion that students had to be brought out of their home country and to the developing world. Instead eminent experts, academics and professionals from outside South Africa will visit to lend their practical support.