Embassy funds market shed for Kariba community

Admore Mbonda recently in kariba

SCORES of Kariba town residents are set to realise economic benefits from professionally running a market shed and pay-toilets constructed in the area.

The 143 beneficiaries recently underwent training in various aspects to build their capacity to manage the infrastructure and improve their earnings and grow the wider local economy.

Speaking on the sidelines of the training workshop held in Kariba, Gender Links programmes officer, Loverage Nhamoyebonde said capacity building had become imperative after his organisation partnered the Ministry of Local Government, with funding from the Embassy of Sweden, to construct a market shed and a pay toilet to economically empower communities.

“Currently, we are working with 143 participants, who are 50 percent women, 30 percent youths and 20 percent men. We have trained them and equipped them with life and entrepreneurial skills so that they improve in terms of personal urgency, confidence, self-esteem and basic business management, financial management and market access,” said Nhamoyebonde.

“We are also equipping them with enterprise development skills because we have constructed those structures for them, which we are expecting them to professionally run as flagship enterprises with the aim of increasing their income levels and that translates to local economic development.

Beneficiaries expressed appreciation for the training exercise, which they said enables them to make economic sense out of the infrastructure provided by Gender Links and Embassy of Sweden.

“We are really grateful for the training which has capacitated us with the skills to efficiently and effectively manage the market shed and pay toilet whose economic potential we didn’t realise before this training,” said a participant.

Implemented under a programme to uKariba Municipality gender officer, Rosetta Mavi, said the Batonga Classic Market is addressing several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pertaining to poverty, hunger, sanitation, industry, innovation and infrastructure and gender equality, among others.