Several State Owned Enterprises reiterated their commitment to finance agricultural activities to ensure food security in the country.

The commitments were made by the Agribank, DBN and the Environment Investment Fund at a three-day workshop on food security in Windhoek.

Under the Malabo and Maputo declarations, African governments are expected to spend at least 10 percent of their national budgets on the agriculture sector.

But almost all countries on the continent are falling below this target and Namibia in particular has at least managed to spend three percent only.
Four SOEs are making strides to also contribute to the sector.

Agribank's Acting Executive for Marketing and Customer Strategy Elaine Madih says the company continues to support farmers' cooperatives, Trust groups support and farmers towards increasing food security.

"I know that the need is a lot, we must bring the services to more farmers, currently we are only concentrating on the clients of the bank and indicators have shown that we have been able to assist farmers for the past 5 years to really make  a change in terms of money in and money out and that are able to reservice the loan payment in terms of our loan book we have a N$3.5 billion to date."

DBN supports agri-preneurs in the secondary and tertiary sectors to produce finished products.

DBN's Head of Investment Helen Amupolo said the value addition component is what they preoccupy themselves with, they do not want to encroach in territory that they do not understand hence why they stick to value addition within the supply chain.

EIF's Chief Executive Officer Bennedict Libanda too expressed the company's readiness in supporting institutions running climate change initiatives on adaptation and mitigation supporting agriculture.

"We are also working towards peri-urban and urban agriculture resilient projects with the green climate fund, this is targeting affect communities within the urban areas, we know that there is a lot of movement from rural to urban for opportunities, but there is an opportunity for us to come us with innovative small agricultural investments towards those peri-urban areas."