GOBABIS – The Omaheke Regional Council has set plans in motion to establish the region’s first fully-fledged agricultural college.
If it comes to fruition, the college will endeavour to among others address acute food shortage and cases of malnutrition.
The plan is to set up the college at Farm du Plessis in the region’s Okorukambe constituency, where there are readily available but underutilised facilities belonging to the youth ministry.
The gigantic government-owned youth training centre at Farm du Plessis has been dormant or hugely underutilised for over 20 years now – with limited activities taking
place there, if any at all.
“This would require the request for the transfer of the identified facilities to the regional council for the establishment of the college. To support this initiative, the council resolved to persuade relevant government ministries to allocate financial resources for the establishment of the college and its operational costs during the 2024/2025 financial year,” reads council documents.
While multi-faceted efforts will be required to tackle youth unemployment in its entirety, the region’s leadership strongly believes that repurposing the youth centre into a formal agricultural college will be an important step to address the shortage of training opportunities for the region’s youth and will also create economic opportunities.
The youth centre, New Era has learnt, was constructed for the youth ministry in the mid-90s to offer agricultural and related technical training to the local youth, but it has since turned into a venue to host workshops and to house road construction workers occasionally when major capital projects are taking place in the area.
With most of Okorukambe’s constituency consisting of privately owned farms, the council is adamant that establishing such a college will equally create lifelong opportunities for the children of farmworkers, who are mostly denied access to education.
Council also proposed that the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture implement an agricultural curriculum at Mokganedi Tlhabanello Secondary School in the Kalahari constituency, to serve as a preparatory institution for the proposed college.
“Council would further enter into formal partnerships with leading agricultural universities and colleges, such as the University of Namibia’s Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, to support curriculum development, research collaboration, and faculty exchanges by the end of February 2025,” council documents further read.
Documents also show that the council has endorsed the establishment of agricultural production centres in each of the region’s seven constituencies to support the creation of a centralised agricultural processing centre in Gobabis by the end of 2026.
“Council also endorsed the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Northwest Province, in South Africa, to enhance collaboration in agricultural education, research, and farmer support. To enhance food security and drought resilience in the region, we will support the development of irrigation systems in the Aminuis constituency with a feasibility study to be conducted between November 2024 to March 2025.
The ministry of agriculture would be requested to fund the planned feasibility study in Aminuis and other identified areas,” it further states.
-ohembapu@nepc.com.na