By:Hertha Ekandjo
The Hardap region received an integrated food production project which is anticipated to span over 100 hectares, with the pilot phase beginning on an initial 5 hectares.
The project is expected to shore up agricultural production, boost local economy and create a long-term pathway for self-sufficiency.
The project was launched by the Namibia Correctional Services (NCS), United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Impact for Africa (IFA) and Lithon Project on Thursday, at Nedersetting No. 607, a portion of the Hardap correctional facility.
NCS commissioner-general Raphael Hamunyelasaid they have drawn lessons from the current global challenges of food security and affordability, with one the best lessons being the importance of working together to enhance the capacity to locally produce adequate food for the nation.
“The support by the UN WFP to the NCS complements the existing food production strategies such as crop production at Divundu correctional facility, Animal Husbandry at Evaristus Shikongo correctional facility, the piggeries at this facility, Hardap correctional facility and Oluno correctional facility. This goes along with other smaller-scale projects at various correctional facilities across the country,” Hamunyelasaid.
This project will support WFP and the government’s efforts in scaling domestic food production, developing agricultural value chains and improving socio-economic outcomes. The project will also develop, prepare and execute an agricultural pilot project, producing numerous high value crops for local and international markets.
With the help of WFP, the NCS managed to establish four hydroponics projects at four correctional facilities, namely Gobabis, Oluno, Walvis Bay and Windhoek female correctional facilities.
WFP also donated eight metric tons of wheat seeds which was envisaged for planting in the coming season at Divundu, Evaristus Shikongo and Hardap correctional facilities.
Furthermore, WFP and NCS installed a 10 hectares centre pivot irrigation system at the Hardap correctional facility, equipped with 42 solar panels.
At the same occasion, the WFP country director and representative George Fedha said that this project should showcase how Namibia can manufacture food through a production process.
“As you all know Namibia imports 60% of its food from outside, and so projects like this help to gradually reduce that dependency of receiving food from outside,” Fedhanoted.
He said funding was sourced from a financial investor and not from the government.
Chairperson of the Hardap`s regional council Gershon Dausab highlighted that the poverty scale in the region shows that they were not doing well and if something turns out wrong the region would find itself at the worst side of poverty.
“Therefore, the main focus here is agriculture and tourism in the region. It is important to focus and invest in the agriculture sector, and I really mean aggressively, so that we can pull our people out of poverty,” Dausabsaid.
As Namibia continues on the momentous task of zero hunger by 2030, joint ventures such as these are needed for achieving this goal and for spring boarding the achievement of food security and leveraging expertise and resources to accelerate progress toward zero hunger.
In addition to supporting an increase in productivity, the partners will work to improve access to markets, technology, capacity, skills and knowledge required to develop a robust, diversified and resilient initiative.
This partnership is catalytic in developing cutting edge proof of concepts that will tackle the complex, rapidly evolving issues relative to transformative food systems, economic transformation, social protection and progression and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
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