2. What assessment has the First Minister made of how the Wales-Africa programme has strengthened trade with Africa? OQ56759

Well, Llywydd, the Wales and Africa programme is a development and solidarity programme, aligned with the delivery of the United Nations' sustainable development goals. The devastating impact of COVID is the current priority of the programme.

Thank you, Minister. As you will be aware, Wales became the first ever Fairtrade Nation in 2008, and, since 2015, the Welsh Government has provided funding through the Wales and Africa programme for Fair Trade Wales to promote organisations to become fair-trade partners and provide educational outreach on the benefits of fair trade. Fair Trade Wales currently reports that they work with only 30 local fair-trade groups, 200 schools and 18 out of the 22 local authorities. They also only employ two part-time members of staff. At an External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee meeting in 2018, a representative of Fair Trade Wales reported on how budget cuts had meant that they no longer provided suitable bilingual services, and cuts to staffing had meant that their education link-up with schools had drastically dropped. Remarkably, after 13 years of being a Fairtrade Nation, the Welsh Government has still not convinced every local authority to support fair trade, and Fair Trade Wales have reported that they do not even monitor the value of fair-trade goods sold in Wales. Given that they liaise with so few organisations and have no idea of the amount or value of fair-trade goods sold in Wales, can the First Minister comment on how Fair Trade Wales ultimately benefits the promotion of fair trade with Africa and provides value for money for the Welsh taxpayer? Thanks. 

Well, I thank the Member for that question, and I can't avoid gently pointing out to him there's an irony in his question, on a day when the House of Commons will be debating the £4 billion cut in overseas aid that his party has decided to impose on some of the poorest people anywhere in the world. But let me take his question at face value, because I think the question is an important one. There is more to do in promoting the values of fair trade here in Wales. I wish every local authority in Wales were signed up to that agenda, and the Wales and Africa programme certainly does support fair trade. It is not a trade programme; as I say, it's a programme designed to emphasise development and solidarity between Wales and other parts of the world.

But some of us here will have met in this building Jenipher Sambazi, the vice-chair of a Ugandan coffee co-operative, where there is a partnership between Jenipher's Coffi and fair-trade organisations here in Wales, in which the trees are planted in that part of Uganda using the Size of Wales programme, which we invest in as well, so that there are sustainable ways of using the products of that planting, and to do it in a way that is fair to the people who work in that industry—those Ugandan farmers—and also offers opportunities for people in Wales to be able to enjoy the fantastic product of all that effort. 

First Minister, as you alluded to in our first response, Wales and Africa is about much more than trade. Oxfam Cymru, through their partners in Uganda, have been told that COVID-19 cases increased by over 1,000 per cent last month, and that only 4,000 people have been fully vaccinated in a population of 45 million. How is Welsh Government using its voice to push UK Government to share life-saving vaccine know-how and technology with low-income countries such as Uganda? 

Well, Llywydd, in the job that I do, and indeed in the jobs, I'm sure, that Members around the Chamber do, we have some difficult conversations that we have with sometimes members of the public, sometimes with other organisations. I've seldom had a more challenging conversation than I had recently with the vice-chancellor of the University of Namibia—a good friend of Wales, a good friend of Cardiff University—and the reason that the call was difficult was because the sheer desperation in the vice-chancellor's plea to Wales to help him and his fellow citizens in Namibia went straight to your heart. He had lost 10 members of his staff that week, and more died before the week was over. Seven per cent of the population of Namibia are likely to be vaccinated, and the impact on their public services is simply that there is nowhere for anybody to go to get the help that they need. And that is true not just of Namibia but it's true of Uganda and other partners of the Wales-Africa programme as well.

The vice-chancellor wanted me to lobby the UK Government to accelerate the supply of vaccine to Namibia, and I did that immediately. I wrote straight away to the Foreign Secretary and relayed the conversation I'd had and the case—the urgent case—that there is there. But it's more than just supply of vaccine; it's the ability on the ground to deliver the vaccine when it's received, and we are very fortunate in the Phoenix Project—headed up, many of us will know, by a remarkable woman, Professor Judith Hall of Cardiff University—where we have partners on the ground both in Uganda and in Namibia as well. We have since then been working to find what more we can do to provide equipment and other forms of support to those partners that we have whose needs are so desperate. And my colleague Jane Hutt, I know, hopes to be able to make an announcement before the end of this week, before the end of the term, on the additional help that we are going to be able to provide.

We look forward to that announcement, First Minister, because I think it is right that our focus right now should be on helping our friends in how to deal with the COVID crisis that is hitting them so dramatically hard. But I wanted, and I thank Joel for raising this question, to raise, in fact, the partnership between Ferrari's coffee manufacturer in Pontyclun, in my constituency, and indeed Jenipher's Coffi, which I drink myself regularly in my little coffee machine in the house, and it's a great example of how the excellence of manufacturing here in Wales, with Welsh-owned businesses, partners up with friends in Africa in order to create a win-win situation, and I'd like to know what more we can do to replicate that model across parts of Wales. And would he just join with me today as we speak here in this Senedd, in this Parliament today, in sending our best wishes to those in the UK Parliament who are seeking to overturn the proposed budget cuts in the UK international development budget? It is pertinent to the discussion we are having here right now.

Well, Llywydd, any message that could go from Members of this Senedd to those who are participating in that debate as we speak here and to strengthen the arguments of those many Members of the Conservative Party who have spoken out against the cuts in aid, anything we could do to strengthen their arguments, many of us here would wish to do exactly that. I was able to meet Jenipher of Jenipher's Coffi here in the Senedd in February 2020—one of the very last visits to be made here before visits have become so much more difficult. She was a remarkable young woman, I thought—and others, I know, will have met her as well—both in her commitment to her cause, but in her ability to articulate the difference that the investment—. The small investment that we make from Wales; we make small amounts of money available, but we are lucky to have partners in Wales and beyond whose enthusiasm and dedication makes that money work so much harder than otherwise would be the case. And the coffee farmers in the Mount Elgon area of Uganda, through the Coffee 2020 project, are a very practical demonstration of the difference that we can make, and the fair-trade arrangement here in Wales, involving my colleague's constituency, involving the Fair Do's fair-trade shop in the Cardiff West constituency as well, I think is a really striking and practical example of how money invested from a rich country, by any global standards, in a place where people struggle to get the very basics of everyday life, makes such a difference. And the debate in the UK Parliament this afternoon, Llywydd, is that very rare thing in any Parliament—it is a debate that is genuinely about the difference between life and death for many, many other people.