Locals must help run green schemes
... governor calls for regional council involvement
NKURENKURU - Kavango West governor Sirkka Ausiku says government-owned green schemes should team up with locals through potential joint ventures to ensure optimal output. “We want local participation and the region to run the green schemes but we need capacity. That joint venture should come in either at the regional council level or by business people from Kavango West and then from Mashonaland East Province,” she said.
Ausiku said this during a consultative engagement with Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Namibia Rofina Chikava and her deputy Bornway Mwanyara when they paid a courtesy visit to the regional leadership on Tuesday.
During the engagement, the parties discussed a proposal for a twinning arrangement that the Mashonaland East Province would like to have with the Kavango West region. Further, they discussed the opportunities the two regions could pursue or learn from one another to bring about economic development in terms of exchange of best practices and employment creation.
The regional governor said the region is ready to explore and learn from the initiative and utilise the skills. “We would also like to learn how the youth in Zimbabwe take agriculture as a business or as part of their livelihoods, because here, our youth don’t see that we can make business out of agriculture. Not all of them,” she stated.
In addition, the governor said she would like the yet to be constructed vocational training centre to integrate agriculture as a field of study once operational, to ensure that the region has graduates in this particular field.
Ausiku also presented her hopes for the region to get involved in manufacturing, including producing citrus juice and tomato paste for Namibian fishing companies. “We want to introduce tomato paste. We have the fishing industry in Erongo region. We hear they are exporting tomato sauce, but why can’t they get it from Kavango West to process their fish,” she stated. She added the region wants to see how the community can make a better living out of the nine community forests, as they are
currently not fully utilised.
Nkurenkuru councillor Fillipus Tenga said he was hopeful and look forward to working together with Zimbabwean counterparts in order to transform the region into a food basket. The team also visited the border town of Katwitwi and the Namibia Industrial Development Agency warehouse where the Agro Marketing and Trade Agency milling facility and Miombo Forestry Products CC, the timber processing company, are situated.