OMUTHIYA – The Oshikoto regional council is planning to improve the livelihood of small and medium enterprise (SME) owners by teaching them business management and other skills.

On Friday, the council’s spokesperson, Petrus Nehale, said as part of their annual work plan, they conducted a two-day free training for small and medium rural business owners to equip them with skills and expertise to thrive in their business ventures.

“We embarked on training SMEs in far remote areas of the region on the aspect of basic business management,” Nehale said.

He said the SMEs were identified from the Eengodi, Okankolo and Nehale Lyampingana constituency offices, and they benefitted indirectly or directly from their relevant stakeholders, such as the ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare and Rural Development Committee (RDC).

“We are targeting these people during this exercise and training them on business registration on how to come up with a business proposal, bookkeeping and all other areas that they are lacking as we have engaged them before,” said Nehale.

He said they came up with the modules to train them during the week of 23 to 24 November 2023 in the respective constituencies.

“Our team has been on the ground to train these SMEs in Eengodi, Okankolo and Nehale Lyampingana constituencies; we trained a total of 30 SMEs this year, and we do this exercise every year,” said Nehale.

He further said the main aim is to capacitate their SMEs in far remote areas to thrive and employ others.

“The ultimate goal is to uplift the rural economy and make sure they are able to sustain themselves,” said Nehale. 

- Nampa