Pretoria - South Africa and Namibia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which seeks to strengthen the bilateral cooperation in the fields of agriculture, livestock, farm-related trade and investments.
The MoU was signed by South Africa's Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson and her counterpart, John Mutorwa in Pretoria on Friday.
The two countries have agreed to cooperate in animal health, plant health, research collaboration, and food safety, promotion of agricultural investment, livestock, organic agriculture and irrigation.
Addressing reporters before signing the MoU, Ms Joemat-Pettersson said other areas of cooperation includes food security, bilateral trade in agricultural products, agricultural statistics, production economics and farming enterprise budgets.
"As a former power coloniser of our neighbours, we believe this is the right time for our country to begin contributing towards the development of the country if not the entire Southern Community Development Community (SADC) region.
"The South African government is committed towards consolidating this bilateral relation in the field of agriculture, livestock and agricultural related fields," she said.
The Namibian Minister said the two countries would cooperate by means of joint developmental programmes including coordination of production and marketing programmes; protection and production of pant and animal material.
"We have also agreed to cooperate in conservation of indigenous plant and animal material; control of the black fly along the Orange River; Cooperation on migrant pest; cooperation on professional training," he said.
Since one of the critical areas of the MoU is the training of Namibian Veterinary students, Mr Mutorwa said this will drastically boost his country's livestock sector which is faced with the highest shortage of veterinarians.
"Before we became an independent state 19 years ago, there was no institution in our country tasked with the responsibility of training veterinary practitioners.
"In the recent months, we struggled to control the foot and mouth disease in the north-east of our country, so we believe that the training of more veterinary students will bring positive results for our country," he said.
