Northern Province minister Brian Mundubile says the recently held Northern Province Tourism and Investment Exposition has helped attract more global investment in many sectors in Northern Province.
Mr. Mundubile said Elite Foods, a South African organisation has expressed interest to fund some projects in the farming block in Northern Province.
He added that Northern Province has three categories in the faming block such as commercial, intermediate level and small-scale farmers who will benefit from the South African based funders.
The Provincial Minister said Elite food will also offer technical support, technology and will be buying off the produce from farmers.
He said government has already put up a system that will help investors to settle in the farming block.
And Elite Foods Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Ball says his organization is ready to fund the projects in the farming blocks in the Northern Province.
Nothing has happened yet and some body says the northern province expo is paying dividends. Out of that expensive expo, just one company has just expressed interest, just expressing interested and it is misrepresented to say it is paying dividends. Never straight forward, always trickery
Surely you Mumdubile have you worked for a corporation or run a pavilion at Agriculture Show in Lusaka or CB if someone expresses interest it doesn’t mean its a done deal…do you know what a dividend is?
I was President I would give these jobs to CBU and UNZA graduates walking the streets unemployed as they would know when to run their mouths!!
So the CEO has come to buy some tomatoes from a farmer there and you say the expo has paid dividends. Have you even recovered the K10million that you spent on the expo.
What the minister must be mindful of is that while we need investment, we should not allow a situation that Zambia becomes only a raw material supplier/producer, we should ensure that we empower local processing industries to produce finnished goods. That way we would be deliving the full benefits from our natural resources. South Africans and any country for that matter, would be happy to have a country producing raw materials for their industries. Agro-processing feeds into the bigger picture of multiplier effect when it comes to employment creation and growing our economy.