Matala – The municipality of Matala, province of Huíla, has 480k hectares available for agricultural, livestock, industry and tourism activities, within the framework of the Provincial Government's Plan aimed at attracting national and foreign investment (Invest-Huíla).
The municipal Administrator, Manuel Machado Quilende, revealed that, of this number, only 95k are exploited by 26 cooperatives and 73 peasant associations.
When speaking to local businesspeople, as part of the ongoing consultation since he took charge of the municipality two weeks ago, Machado Quilende assured institutional support for investors who were willing to invest their resources in the municipality.
He pointed out that Matala has the largest irrigation channel in the country, with a length of 42 kilometers, so it is necessary to create conditions to take greater advantage of it, increasing and diversifying production.
The general conductor channel diverted from the Matala hydroelectric dam reservoir is the main source of water supply for irrigation with a flow rate of 5.4 cubic meters per second and a length of 42.6 kilometers.
Currently, half of the water capacity available in the canal is used to avoid waste, but there are more than 450k hectares of underutilized arable land on both banks of the Cunene River.
There are 662 producers within the perimeter, organized into seven agricultural cooperatives, which annually produce between 12 to 40 thousand tons of different products, such as reindeer potatoes, onions, corn, garlic and others. MS/CF/DOJ
