Although the Nandoni Dam has taken up several hectares of the Madzivhandila Agricultural College, the college is still equipping unemployed youths with farming skills.

The spokesperson of the Department of Agriculture, Mr Khathutshelo Sadiki, said the engineers of the Nandoni Dam never told the government that the dam was going to disturb the activities that are rendered at the Madzivhandila College. “They informed the people of Mulenzhe, Dididi, and Budeli that they were going to relocate them. The college is a fixed government property that no one can remove without permission from the government. We are still negotiating with the dam engineers as to what is going on,” Sadiki added.

According to the College’s rector, Mrs Musandiwa Tshisikule, the college conducts a lot of short courses on poultry, vegetable and maize production, as well as some on sub-tropical fruit production. Tshisikule said a lot of the short courses extended for a period of up to a week. She further said the desire to give trainees adequate knowledge and skills for profitable farming made the college develop short courses based on the full production cycle of the commodity.

According to them, most of the short-course programmes target existing farmers.