Africa-Press – Botswana. The late Derek Brink has been described as a distinguished businessman who had extensively cultivated the agribusiness.
Eulogising Mr Brink during a memorial service in Gaborone yesterday, President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi said he was a resolute entrepreneur, who at the age of 24 years, inherited his late father’s business and went on to establish a well-known brand.
Dr Masisi said Mr Brink brought master butchers from Switzerland in the early 1980s to experiment with meat processing before turning it into the household name of Senn Foods.
He said Mr Brink’s story was more resounding in the poultry industry which was the best chapter of his life story.
The President said Mr Brink practised a complex model of agribusiness with its operations stretching from Notwane to Moletemane in the Bobirwa Sub-district.
Long before the introduction of the Reset Agenda, Mr Brink was greatly involved in value chain development, said the President.
Mr Brink, he said, had woven a tapestry of relationships and cultivated an ever expanding circle of friends into formidable trusts of business partnerships and investment groups.
Dr Masisi said through his business acumen and foresight, Mr Brink established SPAR as the first retail chain store in Botswana and never looked back.
With his strong conviction and belief in investment creation, he said Mr Brink turned benchmarking exercises into formidable footprints.
“We came this far as a country because of fellow countrymen like Derek Brink,” he said.
President Masisi said Mr Brink had built a sure pedestal that all could sail on and take the country to greater heights.
He said Mr Brink’s departure left behind huge prospects of recounting his experience of the country he dearly loved, the nation he called his own and the people that literally and figuratively became members of his extended family.
President Masisi said he had been informed that Setswana was the language closest to Mr Brink’s heart.
He described Mr Brink as someone who loved nature and used to go on hunting escapades with his friends, many of them his employees.
Mr Brink, Dr Masisi said, paid attention to workers’ welfare and insisted upon their care.
He said the impactful and purposeful life that Mr Brink lived was signified by the audience gathered to bid him farewell.
The memorial service was coronation of a fruitful life and a lesson all could learn from, said the President.
Stating that agriculture could anchor an economy, Dr Masisi said everyone must therefore strengthen their belief system and pledge to follow in Mr Brink’s remarkable footsteps.
He said such lessons would go a long way in fuelling the transformational agenda and ultimately the realisation of Vision 2036.
Born in Lobatse in July 1942, Mr Brink’s parents lived at Notwane East Farm, where he grew up.
He briefly left the country to study but was first and foremost a farmer and lived his whole life at his farm in Tlokweng.
A cancer survivor, Mr Brink died January 16 as a result of extensive surgery and was laid to rest a few days later.
He is survived by his wife, son, daughter and three grandchildren.
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