BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Adam Afriyie born 4 August 1965 is a British Conservative Party politician, and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Windsor. He was first elected at the 2005 general election and re-elected at the 2010 election.
Early life
The son of an English mother and a Ghanaian father, Afriyie was born in Wimbledon, London and grew up on a
council estate in Peckham, going to the local Oliver Goldsmith Primary School. He was educated at Addey and Stanhope School and has a degree in agricultural economics from Wye College (now part of Imperial College London).
Afriyie has seven half-siblings and one brother. He said of his upbringing: "I never knew my father until I was much older and my mother, Gwen, brought us up alone. She was my rock, the gel at the centre of my life, although her tumultuous relationships with different men made for a constant state of flux at the boundaries of our family."
Business career
Afriyie is chairman of Connect Support Services, an IT support company. Afriyie owned two thirds of DeHavilland, a news and information services company, which was sold to publishers Emap in 2005 for £18 million. He was also a regional finalist in the 2003 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year awards. He was a Governor of the Museum of London, a trustee of the Museum in Docklands and a director of Policy Exchange, a centre-right policy body.
Afriyie is a stakeholder of Axonn Media, a content marketing business which produces content for clients. The company incorporates brands such as Content Plus, News Reach, Direct News and Reel Content. Axonn turned over £9.4m in 2011 and made a pre-tax profit of £1.3m. Afriyie is the largest shareholder of the firm and he and his fellow directors split dividends of £2.2m in 2010 and 2011 and shared directors' pay of £3.6m over the last five years.
Political career
A member of the Conservative Party since 1990, in 1999 Afriye worked for Jeffrey Archer on his unsuccessful campaign to be the first directly elected Mayor of London.
Afriyie was selected as parliamentary candidate for constituency of Windsor in October 2003. He was elected at the 2005 election with an increased share of the vote (49.5%) and a swing to the Conservatives of 1.2%. He is the Conservative Party's first mixed race MP, although he said in an interview with the Evening Standard he considers himself not as black but "post-racial". In the 2010 election, Afriyie was re-elected with an increased share of the vote (60.8%) and a swing to the Conservatives of 11.4%. He made his maiden speech on 20 May 2005.
In Parliament, he was a member of the Science and Technology select committee from 2005 until its abolition in July 2007, and has since been a member of the Children, Schools and Families select committee. Since 2010 he has been the President of the Conservative Technology Forum.
Afriyie voted against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, stating this was because "he didn't think it represented true equality".
Personal life
In May 2004, Adam and Romi Afriyie won a libel case against the Mail on Sunday over a published article titled "What IDS's Mr Perfect didn't tell Tory bosses". The article was called a "hatchet job" by Darcus Howe in the New Statesman.
In August 2005, he married his second and current wife Tracy-Jane (née Newell), a barrister and the former wife of London deputy mayor (then deputy leader of Westminster Council) Kit Malt house.
A self-made millionaire, he is worth an estimated wealth of £13m to £100m. Afryie owns a large house in Westminster, and a former 17th-century monastery in Old Windsor called "The Priory
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