{"id":67157,"date":"2016-04-01T13:11:03","date_gmt":"2016-04-01T11:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/upscaling-sustainable-charcoal-production-in-namibia\/"},"modified":"2016-04-01T13:11:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T11:11:03","slug":"upscaling-sustainable-charcoal-production-in-namibia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/upscaling-sustainable-charcoal-production-in-namibia\/","title":{"rendered":"Upscaling Sustainable Charcoal Production in Namibia"},"content":{"rendered":"

ABIDJAN, Namibia, April 1, 2016\/APO (African Press Organization)\/ — <\/span><\/p>\n

According to the best available estimates, 26-30 million hectares of Namibian farmland are affected by\u00a0bush encroachment. Evidence exist that this phenomenon severely degrades rangelands and hampers\u00a0agricultural productivity. At the same time bush encroachment creates unique opportunities for the\u00a0Namibian economy if biomass is recognised as a valuable resource for existing and new value chains.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging the overall importance of bush control, the governments of Namibia and Germany agreed\u00a0on a 4-year Project to address both the challenges and opportunities that bush encroachment entails.<\/p>\n

The Support to De-bushing Project runs from 2014 until 2017 and is a bilateral cooperation between the\u00a0Namibian Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) and the Government of the Federal\u00a0Republic of Germany. It is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft f\u00fcr Internationale Zusammenarbeit\u00a0(GIZ) GmbH.<\/p>\n

The Project’s overall objective is to trigger large-scale bush thinning activities. To this end a demand-\u00a0driven approach is pursued, focusing on the identification and testing of potential bush based biomass\u00a0value chains. The Project selected three value chains to be supported during the course of its project\u00a0lifetime, namely the value chains of charcoal, animal feed and biomass energy.<\/p>\n

The MAWF\/GIZ Support to De-bushing Project conducted a first charcoal stakeholder workshop in\u00a0November 2015 in Otjiwarongo to identify joint sector promotion activities for the year 2016.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0identified activities were based on the Sector Growth Strategy developed by the Ministry for\u00a0Industrialisation, Trade and SME Development (MITSD). The charcoal stakeholders agreed on the joint\u00a0vision to develop a fully functioning sector association and to introduce improved production\u00a0methodologies in order to foster sustainable charcoal production in Namibia.<\/p>\n

It is against this background that the MAWF\/ GIZ Support to De-Bushing Project has signed a Financial\u00a0Agreement with the Namibian Agricultural Union, to which the NCPA is currently affiliated.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0agreements foresees financial support of NAD 1,691,000 (ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED NINETY ONE\u00a0THOUSAND) and runs for the period April 2016 to December 2016.<\/p>\n

The financial agreement encompasses the following activity areas: 1) re-shaping the organisational\u00a0structures of the NCPA, 2) setting up a pilot project on improved production technologies and\u00a0methodologies, 3) developing a marketing strategy for the Namibian charcoal sector, 4) developing\u00a0informational material and training manuals.<\/p>\n

The official start of this cooperation was celebrated during an inception meeting, which took place at the\u00a0C\u2019est Si Bon Hotel in Otjiwarongo on Thursday, 31 March 2016. The meeting was attended by NCPA\u00a0management and members, NAU representatives, as well as representatives of MAWF\/Directorate of\u00a0Forestry and GIZ.<\/p>\n

The NCPA will hold a Special Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Monday 25 April 2016 in order to confirm\u00a0the planned institutional changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ABIDJAN, Namibia, April 1, 2016\/APO (African Press Organization)\/ — According to the best available estimates, 26-30 million hectares of Namibian farmland are affected by\u00a0bush encroachment. Evidence exist that this phenomenon severely degrades rangelands and hampers\u00a0agricultural productivity. At the same time bush encroachment creates unique opportunities for the\u00a0Namibian economy if biomass is recognised as a valuable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[428,4585,830],"class_list":{"0":"post-67157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-africa","8":"tag-apo","9":"tag-news","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}