|Khomas Governor Laura McLeod-Katjirua has called on its administrators to ensure that development initiatives from partnership agreements bear the intended fruits.

The governor made these remarks during a work plan signing agreement between the |Khomas Region and Jiangsu Province of China.

The joint work plan comes as a result of two MoUs, signed in 2015 and 2023 between the |Khomas Region and the Jiangsu Province, as well as the |Khomas Regional Council and the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress.

As China and Namibia continue to strengthen cooperation in various areas, the newly signed agreement will accelerate progress towards existing cooperation in the fields of science, technology, education, sports, health, trade and investment, agriculture, and tourism.

|Khomas Governor Laura McLeod-Katjirua has stressed the need to ensure that the partnerships successfully materialise to encourage others to emulate the |Khomas/Jiangsu partnership.

"I don't want it to be seen and heard as a song on the lips of the policymakers because we have done our part properly and fairly. The ball is now in the court of our administrators, the immediate implementers of these development initiatives, to keep this wheel moving in the right direction. Dear Administrators, you have a straightforward marching order to avoid us losing the lively connection between where we are now and where we could be in the future with our partnership."

The newly signed five-year work plan agreement will focus on targeted areas such as sectoral partnerships, scholarship and bursary programmes, student and youth exchange programmes, policymakers and staff exchange programmes, trade and investment promotion such as trade fairs and expos, as well as community empowerment programmes.

"We will continue to promote or fully implement the 8 actions China supports for high-quality participation to work hand in hand with the |Khomas Region to consolidate traditional exchanges, expand cooperation in new areas such as modern agriculture, green development, and the digital economy, and continuously enhance the depth of cooperation between our two regions. We hope that as the work plan takes action, we will enlarge the number of Namibian students, especially from the |Khomas Region, to take scholarships to study in Jiangsu," said Ma Xin, Executive Vice Governor of the Jiangsu Province.