Eat more fish!
Lizette Foot, general manager of Team Namibia hands the Team Namibia certificate to Matheus Amadhila, Deputy Chairman of the Namibia Fish Consumption Promotion Trust board of directors at the Polytechnic Hotel School this week. (Photograph by Lorato Khobetsi)
According to Her Excellency, Maria Del Carmen Diez, Spanish Ambassador to Namibia, some important objective of this project have already been met successfully.
“The first fish shop was inaugurated in April this year, two new refrigerated trucks were already delivered to the Trust and several training programmes have been concluded. Let me remind you that this training in fish preparation techniques was conducted by experienced Spanish chefs, who visited Namibia in 2011,” she said.
The Ambassador was speaking at the launch of the renovated website of the Trust, a recipe book based on Namibian fish products and the presentation of the Fish Consumption Survey in Namibia.
The recipe book which was produced by the Galician Hotel School, together with the NFCPT includes 30 delicious recipes for most of the commercial fish species from the country’s waters.
“I hope these efforts will assist the Namibian authorities in reaching their targets, making fish products more accessible to the Namibian population and increasing the level of fish consumption among Namibians. This project shows that our bilateral collaboration with the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources is, indeed, complementary and pertinent. Namibia is a country with great fishing resources,” she added.
She further said, that the levels of local fish consumption is far lower than would be expected due partly to the difficulties in accessing these products.
“The Spanish Government hopes that this project and its contribution materialised here through these three results, will assist the NFCPT in its task of distributing fish to the rural communities,”
The support provided by the Spanish Government to the fisheries sector in Namibia dates back to 2002, focusing on the training of staff and capacity building in the country’s fishing institutions and aquaculture.
“Currently, the Spanish Government through the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) is supporting several projects in the fishing sector, working together with Namibian institutions and its people. We are jointly implementing projects with the National Marine And Research Center, the Directorate of Aquaculture in the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources and the Namibia Fish Consumption Promotion Trust,” said Diez.
Team Namibia also awarded the Namibia Fish Consumption Promotion Trust with a Team Namibia Certificate.
