Stanbic Bank granted the loan facility as part of a green finance product that aims to support climate action in the agricultural industry. With the loan injection, the company will be able to expand operations with another 250 hectares of food production, growing sugar beans, lucerne crops, and white maize. The company partnered with the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) in 2016, with the latter leasing the farm known as Talana Farms to Kwenantle for 15 years. Speaking this week during the solar projects groundbreaking ceremony, Kwenantle Farmers director, Limbi Tlhalerwa, said that to date more than P72 million had been ploughed into the farms' operations, with key investments in irrigation systems, heavy plant machinery and other farm assets.
“We have put more than P72 million into this farm with money from investors and some from Stanbic Bank, most of it going into plant machinery and the building of silos. We think of ourselves as a growth-focused company,” she said. Going forward Kwenantle wants to establish itself as a trailblazer in the fodder production value chain. According to Tlhalerwa, Botswana's pastoral value chain needs a supportive fodder production industry to feed livestock, especially with reoccurring droughts. “We are currently the leading producers of lucerne and are going to grow to establish the market in Botswana.
