Kurt Hoffman, director of the Shell Foundation, is an apostate on a mission. A convert from what he sees as the traditional way of giving aid, he now spends his time trying to make his new creed of business-friendly development work.

Trained as a development economist, the amiable American spent a decade in one of the heartlands of the academic development establishment, the UK’s University of Sussex, and shuttled round the traditional aid circuit of the World Bank and United Nations.