Shighuru
Kavango East Governor Dr Samuel Mbambo has appealed to Kavango East residents to stop spending most of their free time at shebeens, but rather to put an extra effort into agriculture and other productive activities.
He said farming produces food unlike shebeens that only drain people’s pockets.
Mbambo spoke at the Shighuru Women Rice Project’s second handover, which was held at Shighuru village on Sunday.
He said prosperity is not given but should rather be worked for. “It goes back to the original law, the original commandment – first work and then eat. In your sweat is where you will get your bread, work for your food, not spend the whole day at shebeens. Our commander-in-chief, the President [Hage Geingob] is saying we declare war against poverty and we the soldiers are saying ‘Amen we are going to’. And he said no one should be left out,” Mbambo remarked.
He also urged the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry to provide the necessary assistance to the rice project. The Shighuru Women Rice Project receives technical support from the University of Namibia (Unam).
“Unam did their job and now they are telling the other arms of government that ‘the ground is prepared, you can take over and assist the people to produce as much food as possible’,” said the governor.
“Unam researches, educates, advises and provides expertise and then the ministry of agriculture comes and helps to assist the community with what it knows it has to produce,” he said.
The threshing of the first and second rice harvest was done at the project at Shighuru village, but the milling was done at the Unam Ogongo Campus in the northern part of the country. On Sunday the women involved in the project were handed the final product of their second rice harvest.
Namibia’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Research, Professor Osmund Mwandemele, said: “You are going to receive 50 bags of 25kg, that’s a lot of rice and it’s only from this small piece of land. It tells you that we can produce rice that can feed the whole Shighuru. If we are committed, it is possible.”
This is the second harvest, after the first rice handover was completed on April 16 this year and the idea is to encourage the community of Shighuru to grow rice.
“We did not come here to grow rice so that we can take it to Windhoek, it’s your product and you must decide whether you want to eat or sell it. All the 50 bags are yours, they belong to the community not to the university,” stressed Mwandemele.
He said the project is part of the university’s contribution to poverty reduction.
The project was only able to plant 3.3 hectares this time with two rice varieties of NERICA 4 and 7. The project was started last December with expertise availed by Unam that fenced the project for N$500 000. Unam further facilitates the project.