Namibia farmers union appoints Shamathe as CEO

WINDHOEK, 08 DEC- The Namibia National Farmers Union on Wednesday announced that it has appointed Kuniberth Shamathe as its chief executive officer, effective January 2022, for a period of five years. The union’s president, Jason Emvula in a media statement said the board of directors are confident that Shamathe will contribute towards assisting communal…

WINDHOEK, 08 DEC (NAMPA) – The Namibia National Farmers Union (NNFU) on Wednesday announced that it has appointed Kuniberth Shamathe as its chief executive officer, effective January 2022, for a period of five years.

The union’s president, Jason Emvula in a media statement said the board of directors are confident that Shamathe will contribute towards assisting communal farmers to become successful in contributing to Namibia’s food security.

Shamathe in the same statement said the focus of the union should be commercialising and building the climate resilience of communal farmers instead of developing routine support dependency, adding that addressing barriers hindering transformation of the communal agricultural sector, as well as inculcating a culture of entrepreneurship among communal farmers, is the way to go.

“I acknowledge that the communal farming sector is the most challenging sector and that a lot of support is needed to enable communal farmers to succeed. I aim to help build an entrepreneurship culture to transform the communal farmers into business-oriented farmers, we must relieve the dependence that communal farmers have on the government,” he said.

Shamathe served as a project manager at Meatco Foundation before he became Executive Officer at the same foundation. He served as monitoring and evaluation manager at Conservation Agriculture Namibia, national coordinator for Food Security and Disaster Risk Reduction at Namibia Red Cross Society and project officer at German Technical Cooperation.

(NAMPA)

ST/PS/AS