Following the deaths of two children out of 12 diagnosed with malnutrition in Otavi earlier this year, the town's mayor, Isaac !Hoaeb, together with the Namibia Housing Action Group, started training residents of the Kap-en-Bou housing project on gardening and nutritional values.

Kap-en-Bou has 705 plots with more than 2,000 residents.

The idea is for each resident of Kap-en-Bou to have a small garden at home, while a large community garden will also be established.

"This garden will also serve as a training centre whereby we want to roll this out to the whole community. We want to train the whole community, and we have also distributed seeds to the community members, they are going to plant these seeds in their backyard gardens, and they are also going to plant these nutritional shrubs and trees in the backyard garden so that we can go into food sufficiency and food production," said !Hoaeb.

Although fruits and vegetables might be expensive, nutritionists say there are locally available plants that contain high nutritional values.

The beneficiaries welcomed the training on gardening and the seeds they received.

The municipality has also started upgrading the informal settlement and is now at an advanced stage of redesigning the area. 

The council, !Hoaeb says, will also be setting up a horticulture project that will serve as a training facility for the community.

The aim is to address challenges caused by food scarcity in Otavi for some community members while shaping the council's dream of becoming an urban agricultural hub.