Namibia: Farmers Union Names New CEO

Rundu — The Namibia National Farmers Union (NNFU) has appointed Kuniberth Shamathe as the CEO for the next five years, starting January 2022.

Shamathe is currently heading the Meatco Foundation as executive officer.

The new CEO emphasised the importance of commercialising and building climate resilience of communal farmers instead of developing routine support dependency.

“I believe 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,” said Shamathe, who also has a strong background in project management skills, which he is looking forward to utilising to impact communal farmers.

Shamathe, who inked his acceptance as CEO about a week ago, noted that NNFU and stakeholders need to provide an enabling environment for communal farmers to succeed.

“I hold two masters degrees, one for research in natural resources management from the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) focusing on rangeland management while the second one is a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Namibia (Unam) specialising in management strategy,” he said.

He also possesses three undergraduate qualifications: honours, bachelor of technology and national diploma, all in agricultural management, from the then Polytechnic of Namibia.

He also worked as a project manager at Meatco Foundation before he assumed executive officer position there. Shamathe also worked for several organisations in various positions such as monitoring and evaluation manager at Conservation Agriculture Namibia (CAN), national coordinator for food security and disaster risk reduction at Namibia Red Cross Society (NRCS) and project officer at Germany Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

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