WINDHOEK – Kongalend Financial Services has marked a significant milestone on its development path last Friday, handing over a total of 18 tractors complete with rippers, worth over N$5.5 million, at events in Ondangwa last Friday and Rundu on Monday, to successful applicants for a special financing package extended under its Lima Power agri-business loan.
Comprising 4×4 John Deere tractors supplied by Hoffman’s Farm Implements in Otjiwarongo and rippers locally manufactured by Baufi’s Agricultural Services, will mean that lead farmers participating in the Namibia Conservation Agriculture Programme (NCAP) are now equipped for the season ahead – and beyond.
The Kongalend agri-business package was designed to capacitate participants in the three-year USAID-funded Namibia Conservation Agriculture Project (NCAP), co-ordinated by NCBA CLUSA, and rolled out through its implementing partners, the Namibia National Farmers Union (NNFU) and the Ondangwa-based Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions (CES), who have been recommended to be appointed as tillage service providers to acquire tractors and rippers required to provide such services to their respective communities.
The NCAP, which is already in full swing, is introducing small-scale farmers in the seven crop producing regions of northern Namibia to conservation agriculture through hands-on training conducted on demonstration plots in their areas using methods that have been specially designed to mitigate the impacts of both drought and flood in the crop-growing communal areas of northern Namibia. Programme participants are being taught techniques to increase rainwater retention, soil fertility and crop productivity thereby countering the effects of climate change, increasing food security and providing participants with reliable means of generating cash crop income.
To guarantee the long-term impact and sustainability through adoption of these new farming methods, Kongalend, as the programme’s financial partner of choice, is affording programme participants access to finance through its Lima Power loan product, to acquire the agricultural machinery, equipment and inputs required to support their progress from subsistence farming to small-scale commercial crop production.
To ensure access to sufficient numbers of reliable and functional ripping service providers, critical for successful first-stage implementation of the NCAP, Kongalend extended a special tractor-financing package as a supporting pro-active intervention.
By Deon Schlechter