HERE'S another quiz question. Who is the biggest consumer in the world of natural vanilla extract?

Answer - the Coca Cola Corporation, the world's largest soft drinks manufacturer.

I learned this piece of useful information (well, one never knows) late last week, towards the end of a visit to Uganda where we'd spent Christmas and the New Year for family reasons.

Uganda was once described by Winston Churchill as the "Pearl of Africa".

It's not hard to see why. Despite being bang on the equator most of the land is at a high altitude so the climate is lovely all year round.

The people are among the most naturally courteous I've met anywhere in the world. Uganda is peaceful, and now doing pretty well.

But later this year, if the film "The Last King of Scotland" does as well as I hope, we'll all be reminded of Uganda's quite recent bloody past.

The connection between Scotland and Uganda was that Idi Amin, the very mad and very bad dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979 once declared himself to be "last King of Scotland" - leading to a book, and now a film of that name.

Amin's rule is estimated to have cost the lives of 300,000 Ugandans (of a population now of 27 million).

One of those expelled in this brutal ethnic cleansing campaign was Blackburn with Darwen's own former Mayor, Councillor Yusuf Virmani - who left Uganda as a frightened 16-year-old.

When finally peace and the beginning of stability were restored in Uganda in 1986 by Yoweri Museveni, who has just been re-elected as President in a multi-party election, the government of Uganda began restoring the property to those who had been expelled.

Many British farmers returned, to run their tea and coffee plantations, and to develop other high-value agricultural products - like the flowers and green beans now on sale in supermarkets all year round.

Lula Sturdy, formerly an Oxfordshire furniture-maker, inherited from her late uncle a mixed farm in north eastern Uganda of bananas, coffee, cattle and alcohol (distilled from a particular strain of banana).

She finally settled on vanilla as a high- value crop which could easily be exported - something the Museveni government were encouraging.

What Lula has done is very special, in my view. She's worked extraordinarily hard in the seven years since she's been there, not just to make a success of the business, but above all to improve the lives of hundreds of farmers and their families in the area.

Aid has its role in lifting living standards of health and education in Africa, but it is trade that can make a real difference.

Lula now has a network of 600 farmers accredited by the Fairtrade organisation.

Because of the power of this certification, for quality and method, Lulu can pay the farmers who supply her twice the current standard price for vanilla beans.

Until I'd seen the sharp end of the Fairtrade system, I'd been a bit sceptical of it. I'm not now.

It benefits both producers and consumer in equal measure. We really are part of one world these days.