Windhoek
He is a caring, unpretentious Chinese businessman with unrivalled generosity.
He wants to help Namibia fulfil Vision 2030. Vision 2030 is the national development plan launched by founding president Sam Nujoma in 2004. It sets the framework for Namibia’s development agenda, objectives and economic targets that should be achieved by 2030.
Chinese millionaire Jack Huang is the founder of Namibia China Loving Heart organisation, a charity through which he gives scholarships to needy Namibians.
Through the years he has ploughed back some of the profits from his stable of companies to help pauperized but academically bright Namibian students to study most specifically medicine in China.
His generosity personifies the sharp-witted Chinese aphorism, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
Last Friday at State House at a ceremony witnessed by President Hage Geingob, Huang through his charity handed scholarships to six Namibian students.
Jiangsu governor Li Xueyong and the Namibian Minister of Health Dr Bernard Haufiku and the Minister of Higher Education, Training and Innovation Dr Itah Kandji-Murangi also graced the event.
Medical certification is one of the most desired degrees because apart from automatic job guarantees there are countless other options beckoning.
Huang, under whose stable is mining exploration, building material trading, property – commercial, residential and industrial – and trans-frontier trading at Oshikango, owns ten affiliate firms.
The Namibia Chinese Loving Heart organisation has so far endowed 28 Namibians to travel to China to study medicine so that they qualify as doctors on completion of their studies.
“Through this programme we hope to substantially alleviate poverty across Namibia,” explained Huang.
There is also a Namibian enrolled at an Australian university for a PhD degree funded by Huang.
It costs Huang 400 000 RMB – the equivalent of N$826 666 – to pay for insurance, tuition, incidentals and other costs for each of the young medical greenhorns sent to Jingsu medical school in China for five years of laborious studies on campus.
He also pays every two academic years for return air tickets from China to Namibia of the students he sponsors.
Huang has spent in excess of N$14 million to pay for the medical studies of Namibians.
Apart from the initial group of 27 Namibians funded through the Namibia Chinese Loving Heart Organisation there was the 28th Namibian who solicited funding from Huang to enable her to complete her medical studies that hung by a thread and were nearly cut short when funds dried up.
The Chinese tycoon also previously made cash donations amounting to N$600 000 to government feeding programmes.
He also bought 30 tonnes of maize meal for drought relief but there were other praiseworthy efforts not chronicled in which Huang dished out incognito donations to necessitous causes in Namibia.
Huang says Namibia China Loving Heart organisation developed the desire to assist Namibians around 2006 following his visit to Omafo – a rural hospital near the border town of Oshikango, where patients had to wait in long queues for hours before Cuban expatriate doctors examined them.
Speaking through an interpreter he said initially he wanted to give what would have amounted to short-term assistance.
He reasoned Cubans doctors would sooner or later leave the country, and that if he could provide funds to Namibians to go and study medicine in China they would always come back and serve their country as doctors.
After protracted talks involving officials in China the first group of Namibian students went to China in 2010.
Huang says only bright students desiring to acquire medical knowledge and “desiring to serve their country once they graduate,” are selected so that all of Namibia benefits from his social welfare and magnanimity.
Iipinge Edward, 24 years of age, whose father died when he was still a four-year-old and whose mother is jobless is a beneficiary of this help with no strings attached.
Brought up by his grandmother to lift the burden on the shoulders of his mother who had to raise five children, his alma mater is Mweshipandeka Senior Secondary School where he did English, Oshindonga, maths, physical science, biology and geography.
The fifth-year medical student narrates: “I grew up around my grandmother in the north with my cousins, who basically took care of us. I had an uncle who used to support us financially but he passed away in 2007 and that was when things started going sour real quick. The money was really tight, we could barely afford the basics.”
But thanks to Huang’s generosity he and others get monthly stipends of N$2 200.
Indeed the door to charity is difficult to open and difficult to close, recites another proverb in Mandarin, which is unbelievably endowed with multitudinous words of wisdom.