Andrew Cohen

Sir Andrew Benjamin Cohen (7 October 1909 – 17 June 1968) was Governor of Uganda from 1952 to 1957.

Early life and education Cohen was from a distinguished Anglo-Jewish family. He was a descendant of Levy Barent Cohen. He was educated at Malvern College and Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving a degree in Classics. He was a Cambridge Apostle.

Gold Coast In 1947, Cohen was appointed Assistant Under-Secretary for the Colonial Office's Africa division. This same year, he issued the Cohen Report which recommended the gradual devolution of power to Africans. However, only the Gold Coast was deemed to be capable of self-government "within a generation".

In 1948, a British inquiry was launched by the Labour government into the causes of a series of riots in the Gold Coast. Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones and Cohen sent Aiken Watson, a supporter of the Fabian Society who had previously stood as a Labour candidate in the 1935 election, to tour the colony and question witnesses. Cohen advised Watson and his colleagues to "report on the disturbances...and their underlying causes: and to make recommendations on any matter arising".

Many colonial officials in the Gold Coast and some civil servants in London considered the report to be an extreme overreaction. Arden-Clarke held this position until Ghanaian independence in 1957, a process he helped to facilitate. The Kabaka returned to Kampala on 17 October 1955. Abu Mayanja was among those who escorted Sir Edward Mutesa from his London exile in 1955.

The negotiations leading to the Kabaka's return, although appearing to satisfy the British, were a resounding victory for the Baganda. Cohen secured the Kabaka's agreement not to oppose independence within the larger Uganda framework. Not only was the Kabaka reinstated in return, but for the first time since 1889, the monarch was given the power to appoint and dismiss his chiefs (Buganda government officials) instead of acting as a mere figurehead while they conducted the affairs of government. The Kabaka's new power was cloaked in the misleading claim that he would be only a "constitutional monarch," while in fact he was a leading player in deciding how Uganda would be governed, and would become the country's first president in 1962.

UN Trusteeship Council From 1957 Cohen was the UK representative to the United Nations Trusteeship Council. In 1959 he was a member of the Special Mission to Samoa to negotiate its independence from New Zealand. He was involved in the transfer of the Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons to the French-controlled state of the Cameroun Republic on 1 October 1961. Cohen had argued against offering independence to the territory, and pro-independence Southern Cameroonians blamed him for the fact that the UN did not allow that question to be put.

Later life Cohen was Permanent Secretary of the Minister of Overseas Development from 1964 until his death from a heart attack in 1968.