German Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) has announced it will open Zambian-German Agricultural Knowledge Centre (AKTC) to offer sustainable agricultural techniques to the farmers of the southern African country

Zambia-farmerTogether with the private sector partners and the expertise of the implementing consortium, AKTC plans to become a state-of-art training centre in Zambia. (Image source: WorldFish/Flickr)

BMEL plans to launch the centre in April 2015, it said.

According to BMEL, AKTC will conduct trainings for machine operators, farm managers, agricultural institutions, farm owners and other players in the Zambian industry.

The centre is one of the projects of the bilateral cooperation programme of BMEL. It is supported by the Zambian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAL) on the policy level and by the Golden Valley Agricultural Research Trust (GART) and the Zambian National Farmers Union (ZNFU) on the implementation level.

The objective of the project is to establish and run a training and knowledge centre on the GART research station site, which can offer practical training in modern agricultural machinery and sustainable agricultural production to farmers.

Beneficiaries of the project will be technical staff from agricultural farms and enterprises (tractor drivers, agronomists and machinery service staff), farm manager, staff from machinery rings and agricultural service providers, traders of agricultural machinery and staff from agricultural training and education institutions, noted BMEL.