A Key Focus on Skills Development

A Key Focus on Skills Development

A significant component of our Human Resources Strategy and long-term sustainability within the RBX group is ensuring that our staff have the necessary skills and education to excel in their relevant positions. Nomalizo Ngomane, who joined the Business Development team in 2019, is a fine example of this as she recently submitted her Masters thesis for examination and defended her thesis last week.

Registered with Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape in the department of Conservation and Entomology, Noma was based at the Sugarcane Research Institute in KwaZulu-Natal (another grower-based organisation). The overall aim of her study was to formulate an efficient and economical diet for mass rearing Eldana saccharina (an economically damaging pest in South African sugarcane) in support of the sterile insect technique as a management strategy against this pest. SASRI has collaborated with X-SIT on this project for some time – so Noma was exposed to the RBX group prior to joining our team, further to this she was also a Citrus Academy student so it was a great fit from the start! This is a fantastic example of how RBX collaborations with the academic community and the Citrus Academy achieves skills development within our industry. Some of the skills acquired by Noma which will add significant value to RBX include artificial diet formulation and development using carcass milling technique and chemical composition studies, insect rearing and field performance evaluations.

Although graduation has not taken place yet we look forward to working with Noma in the future and developing more capacity within the RBX group through our various skills development programmes and study agreements in place with staff.