Kuniberth Shamathe has been named CEO of the Namibia National Farmers Union (NNFU) for the next five years, beginning in January 2022.
Shamathe currently serves as executive officer of the Meatco Foundation.
Instead of becoming reliant on routine support, the new CEO stressed the importance of commercializing communal farmers and building climate resilience.
“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 the 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).
