IMASIKU
By JUDITH NAMUTOWE-
THE Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) is now ready to establish industrial clusters in all parts of the country, Enterprise development manager Kalobwe Chansa has said.
Mrs Chansa said the process would start with Kalingalinga light industrial cluster in Lusaka and later move to other parts of the country.
Speaking during the Engineering Cluster workshop in Lusaka at the weekend, Mrs Chansa said ZDA was currently assisting local entrepreneurs to fit in the industrial clusters.
ZDA was working on the number of programmes aimed at assisting small enterprises to grow to a level where they would be able to employ themselves and other people in the clusters.
“One of the programmes we are doing is that of establishing industrial clusters. A group that you see here is called Light Engineering Industrial Cluster.
“We are working with a group of metal fabricators and carpenters based in Kalingalinga so that we can form a cluster and link them to raw material suppliers, market and business development services such as Zambia Bureau of Standards,” Mrs Chansa explained.
What the agency was currently doing is to build capacity among the local enterprises so that they are able to do business effectively in a more efficient manner to raise income.
Mrs Chansa said, by so doing entrepreneurs would have grown their business and would be in a better position to create jobs for other people in the country.
She advised entrepreneurs to produce quality products to enable the Agency link them to markets that will promote Zambian exports.
She said this could help bring about the much needed foreign exchange in the country.
Mrs Chansa said it was only important that quality of Zambian products was improved, so that entrepreneurs were able to compete favourably with products coming onto the Zambian market.
Meanwhile Technical Development Advisory Unit (TDAU) representative Mulambwa Imasiku who was speaking at the same function was concerned at the high levels of ignorance local entrepreneurs had exhibited over the unit.
