Scottish Government announce new International Development Minister and Cabinet Secretary

The Scottish Government has announced that Jenny Gilruth MSP will be nominated as the new Minister for Europe and International Development.

Jenny Gilruth MSP will be taking over in this role from Ben Macpherson MSP, who is now the Minister for Public Finance and Migration. We thank Ben Macpherson for all his ongoing support for the Scotland Malawi Partnership and the international development sector. It has been a pleasure to work with him and we have no doubt that he will bring the same energy and positive impact to his new post as he has with international development.

We welcome Jenny Gilruth to the post and look forward to working closely with her.

In today’s reshuffle, Fiona Hyslop MSP has also moved to become Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture. Michael Russell MSP is becoming Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs, so he will once again be the Cabinet Secretary responsible for international development.

Michael Russell MSP is a longstanding supporter of the Scotland Malawi Partnership, both from his earlier time leading with the Scottish Government’s international development work, during which he visited Malawi and helped launch the Government’s core funding of our sister network, the Malawi Scotland Partnership (MaSP). He has also been a leader of, and actively involved in, the Scottish Parliament’s Malawi Cross Party Group which the SMP provides the Secretariat for.

Jenny Gilruth was one of around 100 of Scotland's 129 MSPs who came to our UN Sustainable Development Goals exhibition in May 2017 to pledge their support and learn about Malawi links in their constituency/region. Jenny, pictured here at the SMP exhibition, was keen to show her specific support for SDG5, on gender equality.

For more information about the new ministerial appointments, please see here.