NKURENKURU – Kavango West Regional governor Sirkka Ausiku says her region will continue to invite investors to region in a bid to uplift the livelihoods of residents and for businesses to thrive.
“We strive to provide an environment conducive for investment to further stimulate economic growth in the region,” Ausiku said during the launch of the Telecom Namibia Services and teleshop in Nkurenkuru on Thursday last week. “Our efforts to attract investors to the region continue to yield positive results, and this is what Telecom Namibia has done to come here and put up infrastructures and mobile services to the people of the region. The upgrades by Telecom Namibia allows the people of the region to have instant access and connectivity to the rest of the world, and our people can now engage in transactions such as online banking,” Ausiku said, although she was disappointed that it took Telecom Namibian six years to open up the shop since the creation of the region.
Ausiku noted that since the creation of Kavango West, the region’s focus was to bring services closer to people. “We all know that there was no major development in Nkurenkuru since its establishment in 2006, as by now it was supposed to be a big town. Nkurenkuru still does not have a district hospital even the health centre is still incomplete,” she said. “The town needs a full fledge secondary school with a hostel, a hotel or a lodge to cater for our visitors and to host events. However, since 2015, we can see services coming to our region like the event we are witnessing this afternoon. Government has started to set up offices, ministries and agencies. Banks are also operating from Nkurenkuru and new jobs are created,” she continued. Ausiku admitted that with the recent economic activities in Kavango West, there are positive impacts on the livelihood of people.
According to the Namibia Labour Force Survey, the regional unemployment rate was at 36.4 percent in 2016 and now at 33.0 percent in 2018.
“That shows that our new region is growing and this growth comes from concerted efforts from all of us the central government, regional council, the local authority, our traditional leaders and the people of the region and investors. However, as a region, we are concerned with youth unemployment,” she said.
The governor’s office in Kavango West have started to engage the Regional Youth Forum to come up with a regional strategy to address challenges of unemployment amongst the youths. “And again, I am inviting all stakeholders and investors in development to join us,” she said. Kavango West is among the poorest regions in the country and is highly rural at 99.99 percent, with no feeder roads. However, the region is abundantly blessed with natural resources, fertile land and plenty of economic investment opportunities.