Agribank and GIZ sign agreement
Agribank and the GIZ this week signed a one-year agreement to support bush control and bush utilisation initiatives.
The agreement covers five areas of cooperation and includes product development, which will see collaborative action in the development of finance products for projects geared to bush control and biomass utilisation, loans recovery assessments which will deal with bush-based value addition loans, information sharing which will touch on the De-bushing Advisory Service (DAS) to offer referral services, capacity building between the DAS and Agribank to jointly coordinate capacity building for bush control loans holders and monitoring and evaluation of bush control and utilisation activities both organisations said in a joint statement.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Agribank CEO Sakaria Nghikembua said the agreement demonstrated Agribank's resolve to play a meaningful role in the socio-economic transformation and development of Namibia.
“We continuously strive to innovate ways and means to ensure that our products and services become more accessible to all Namibians in order to contribute to the development of agriculture in this country,” Nghikembua said. GIZ project team leader Frank Gschwender said there was great potential for a diversified industry based on Namibian encroacher bush.
“The scope of bush encroachment is huge, estimated at more than 30 million hectares of land amounting to a total of 200 to 300 million tonnes of biomass, providing Namibia with a sheer unlimited resource which is in high demand globally.”
According to Gschwender, the knowledge of the opportunities created through biomass utilisation is crucial for the industry to flourish.
“This cooperation is seen as a roadmap to create financial models suited to boost the bush-based biomass industry, thereby achieve large-scale rangeland restoration,” Gschwender concluded.
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The agreement covers five areas of cooperation and includes product development, which will see collaborative action in the development of finance products for projects geared to bush control and biomass utilisation, loans recovery assessments which will deal with bush-based value addition loans, information sharing which will touch on the De-bushing Advisory Service (DAS) to offer referral services, capacity building between the DAS and Agribank to jointly coordinate capacity building for bush control loans holders and monitoring and evaluation of bush control and utilisation activities both organisations said in a joint statement.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Agribank CEO Sakaria Nghikembua said the agreement demonstrated Agribank's resolve to play a meaningful role in the socio-economic transformation and development of Namibia.
“We continuously strive to innovate ways and means to ensure that our products and services become more accessible to all Namibians in order to contribute to the development of agriculture in this country,” Nghikembua said. GIZ project team leader Frank Gschwender said there was great potential for a diversified industry based on Namibian encroacher bush.
“The scope of bush encroachment is huge, estimated at more than 30 million hectares of land amounting to a total of 200 to 300 million tonnes of biomass, providing Namibia with a sheer unlimited resource which is in high demand globally.”
According to Gschwender, the knowledge of the opportunities created through biomass utilisation is crucial for the industry to flourish.
“This cooperation is seen as a roadmap to create financial models suited to boost the bush-based biomass industry, thereby achieve large-scale rangeland restoration,” Gschwender concluded.
STAFF REPORTER
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