ROBERT HARDMAN on how the monarchy has packed off younger members to far-flung ...

The idea of posting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to Africa to harness their 'soft power' potential as 'rock stars' is an interesting one – particularly in a week when the couple are expecting their first child.

Normally, the impending arrival of a royal baby would be more than enough to keep royal-watchers preoccupied. But, as with so much else, Harry and Meghan continue to break the mould.

However, relocating the couple abroad – an idea still firmly downplayed by the Palace as speculation – is not exactly new. 

Monarchs have been packing off younger sons to far-flung parts of the planet for years.

Prince Harry's namesake and great, great uncle – Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester – was despatched to be Governor-General of Australia in 1945. Similarly, Queen Victoria's third son, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, set off to become Governor-General of Canada in 1911. 

In the 18th century, some of George III's wayward younger sons were sent overseas and not allowed back for years.

So why Africa for the Sussexes? As Youth Ambassador for the Commonwealth, which spans 53 nations spread across every continent, the duke could presumably have set his sights on whichever part of the world appealed to him and his wife. 

Yet he has always had a profound and special connection with Africa. In that regard, he is simply following firmly in the family tradition.

Africa was the very first foreign destination of our Queen. As Princess Elizabeth, she had never ventured south of the Isle of Wight until 1947 when she set sail with the King, Queen and Princess Margaret to thank pre-apartheid South Africa for its wartime support. 

Yesterday the Queen marked her 93rd birthday in Windsor. In 1947, she marked her 21st in Cape Town, delivering one of the most important speeches of her life, pledging 'the whole of my life' to the service of 'our great imperial family'. It was a coming of age in so many ways.

It was during this epic, arduous and spectacular 7,000-mile odyssey from the Cape to Rhodesia's Victoria Falls and back again that the future Queen learned so much at first hand from her beloved father. 

Five years later she was in Africa again with her young husband. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, as they were known, were en route to Australia and New Zealand, standing in for the King whose health had twice forced him to cancel.

Their first port of call, however, was Kenya, where a series of official engagements was followed by a two-day safari to Treetops, the famous treehouse in the branches of a giant fig tree in the Aberdare National Park. 

It was there, famously, that the future monarch 'went up the tree a princess and came down a queen'. During the night, George VI had died in his sleep.

The circumstances of her succession have never been lost on the longest-reigning monarch in our history.

Former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Sonny Ramphal, places enormous significance on the fact this moment occurred in the heart of Africa. 

He believes it has shaped the Queen's entire view of the Commonwealth – and that the same applied to the founding fathers of the Commonwealth.

'It made a big impact on the other leaders,' Sir Sonny explains in my book, Queen Of The World. 'It made it so much easier for her to be a player in their midst. She really became a player at Treetops. She was a child of the Commonwealth too.'

Throughout her reign, the Queen has enjoyed some of her most memorable – and precarious – moments in Africa. Tensions between the Palace and the government of Margaret Thatcher usually had their roots in Africa.

No sooner had Mrs Thatcher come to power in 1979 than she tried to prevent the Queen attending the upcoming Commonwealth summit in Zambia, fearing an ugly bust-up over white-rule in Rhodesia.

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