The Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane, officially launched the Centre for Rural Wealth Creation at Dyamala location outside Alice recently.
The project which is spearheaded by the Fort Cox Agriculture and Forestry Training Institute, will allow communities, youth, students, land reform beneficiaries and unemployed graduates to really become economically active and refine their entrepreneurship development skills.
It will be training participants or beneficiaries to become independent entrepreneurs and to be able to establish and sustain their enterprises.
This programme will be using co-operatives as a vehicle of enterprise development, as it looks to produce job creators and not job seekers who will actively address unemployment, poverty and to reduce inequality that is prevailing on in our country.
“We need a new vision, culture and obsession and with programmes like these, we want to see young people stand proud in enterprises they helped create,” said the MEC.
”The R5.8-million programme looks at nurturing, training and resourcing youths so they are self-reliant and self-sustaining, taking their skills back to the villages they come from,” he added
Qoboshiyane also handed over two tractors, a potato picker and an irrigation system to Fort Cox for the Rural Wealth Creation programme that will benefit more than 150 unemployed youths and graduates.
Fort Cox Council Chairperson Professor F. Lategan said, “We would like to say to the young people who are the future of Agriculture, today the gate is opening for you, take this opportunity and run like someone who is chasing a dream”.
Speaking on behalf of the beneficiaries Mpendulo Goniwe said agriculture is the one sector that can play a major role in boosting the economy of South Africa.
“We must use this opportunity afforded to us, to transform our country through agriculture.”