Feris, Shilongo and Thomas join Team Namibia board

Team Namibia appointed three new board directors at their Annual General Meeting last week.
Seven candidates were nominated for the three vacant positions.
Henry Feris, Managing Director of Pick n Pay Namibia, Gideon Shilongo, Chief Corporate Relations Officer of Ohlthaver & List and Pauline Thomas, Brand Manager at Namdeb, were voted to join the trade promoter’s board.
The Team Namibia Board consists of 16 members of which eight are elected members who serve on the Team Namibia board for the duration of two years.
The AGM keynote address was delivered by Hon. Calle Schlettwein, Minister of Trade and Industry, who said his ministry would like to explore areas of alignment between their ‘Growth at Home’ strategy and Team Namibia’s strategy for gaining a sustainable competitive advantage for Namibian products and services. Schlettwein said the core of the development plan for manufacturing is the need to trigger a commodity-based industrialisation as the engine of growth and economic transformation. He also stated that the perpetual dependency on primary commodities de facto marginalised the Namibian economy and similarly, other African economies. The question of how to avoid this marginalization from the global economy and instead achieve sustainable inclusive economic growth was addressed among other topics such as the quality of Namibian produce and access to local markets, relating to the AGM’s theme of “Increased Competitiveness for Namibian Products and Services”.
The results of Team Namibia’s stakeholder survey were shared with members, which re-affirmed the opportunity for Team Namibia to mobilise Namibian consumers to buy local, as 83.5% of consumers who were interviewed indicated that they would buy the Namibian product if given a choice of exactly the same products of the same price.
Furthermore, Team Namibia’s new vision statement: ‘Making Namibian Products and Services Part of Everyday Life’ alongside its mission statement of ‘facilitating the increased consumption of Namibian products and services locally and abroad by inspiring competitive standards, stimulating consumer confidence and impacting economic sustainability’ was adopted.