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MTC, EIF to establish community seedbank project in Kavango West

MTC, EIF to establish community seedbank project in Kavango West

Mobile Telecommunications Company, MTC, and the Environment Investment Fund (EIF) will jointly avail N$400,000 for the establishment of a community seedbank in the Ncuncuni constituency’s Sarukwe village in the Kavango West Region.

This comes after an agreement was signed between the two organisations in September 2021 to pool their resources for some corporate social responsibility projects.

Environmental Commissioner, Timoteus Mufeti said this partnership would go a long way in assisting the government to build on the 5000 generic seeds that are already stored at the National Botanical Research Institute.

EIF Chief Executive, Benedict Libanda said Namibia is recovering from an unprecedented drought period that has been ongoing for eight years and the ecosystem is deteriorating as a result of the contestant and intensive farming, and climate change, putting biodiversity at risk.

“Hence conserving our generic resources is essential if we are to counter those trends that are threatening our biodiversity. It is fascinating that very old plant accessions that are housed here serve as a priceless reserve for the agricultural sector and that they can restore plant resources if wiped out by severe weather or disease,” Libanda said.

The MTC-EIF partnership will cover three areas that being the Seedbank initiative, Cleaning Campaign and Early Warning System in the Kunene Region.

“MTC believes that environmental sustainability is everybody’s responsibility and because MTC wants to preserve and sustain life and this can only be done through initiatives of this kind,” MTC’s Chief Human Capital and Corporate Services Officer, Tim Ekandjo said.


 

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Donald Matthys

Donald Matthys has been part of the media fraternity since 2015. He has been working at the Namibia Economist for the past three years mainly covering business, tourism and agriculture. Donald occasionally refers to himself as a theatre maker and has staged two theatre plays so far. Follow him on twitter at @zuleitmatthys