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Incubation for four Mondesa SMEs

Back row (fltr) Swakop Uranium Senior Vice President Corporate Affairs Dr Peng Xinjian, Erongo Regional Governor Cleophas Mutjavikua, COSDEC Chairperson Ralph Bussel, Swakop Uranium Vice President Human Resources, Business Support and COSDEC Centre Manager Marilyn Eibes. Front row (fltr) Phillip Gaseb of Mayas Security Services, Selma Kristian of Kokhule Sewing, Joseph Erastus of Siyambingo Woodworks and Fredricka Ramphaga of Spinky’s Take Away and Catering.

Four budding entrepreneurs in Swakopmund received excellent news this week when Swakop Uranium announced it will fund the Community Skills Development Centre in Mondesa for incubation of micro enterprises. Swakop Uranium donated N$60,000 for this purpose.

Phillip Gaseb of Mayas Security Services, Selma Kristian of Kokhule Sewing, Joseph Erastus of Siyambingo Woodworks and Fredricka Ramphaga of Spinky’s Take Away and Catering, learned on Tuesday that their businesses have been selected to benefit from the incubation programme.
Swakop Uranium Vice President: HR, Business Support, Percy McCallum said: “The Swakop Uranium Foundation engages various communities especially in the Erongo region and the greater Namibia to ensure we are able to address the most critical areas of need and create a better future for all our stakeholders,” adding that they will continue to support government initiatives to address social needs particularly in the Erongo region.
McCallum said once Husab Mine is operational, Swakop Uranium will employ more than 1200 permanent employees leading to a massive economic injection in the Erongo Region.
Erongo Regional Governor, Cleophas Mutjavikua, said Namibians should emulate the example set by Asian nations saying “The Chinese believe in maximizing output and don’t rush to knock off at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. They rather focus on the output.”
The Governor said the vision of the Community Skills Development Centre is to ‘provide focused practical skills training that incorporates business skills, entrepreneurship, and life skills’ and also to ‘relate the training programmes to opportunities in the local economy in terms of demand for goods and services.
He said COSDEC’s target market is mainly to the unemployed youth and drop outs in Namibia. In the Erongo region this represents a significant number of the population, and institutions such as COSDEC are important as they provide skills that the youth require to make a living and become productive citizens.
COSDEC Chairperson, Ralph Bussel noted that the Swakop Uranium Foundation’s donation to the Centre was the first from the mining industry and hopes that this will set a trend and encourage other industry players to follow.
Swakop Uranium said its foundation has five focus pillars namely Community support; Health and well-being of the people of the Erongo region; SME development and poverty alleviation; Education and Childhood Development and Sound environmental management.
The Foundation engages various entities, such as the Erongo Development Foundation, local authorities in the region, community-based organisation and Namibian Government with the aim to partner on matters of national importance.
The Husab mine is being developed as low-risk, conventional, large-scale load and haul open pit mine, feeding ore to a conventional agitated acid leach process plant. The mine has a potential life of more than 20 years.

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