Winner of the Karic Brothers Award for economy and commerce

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Vera and Dušan Vasiljević are a married couple, a bright, encouraging and motivating success story of our people living abroad.

If you ask about him in Namibia, a country where he made a true economic revolution, you’ll hear that he was among the few who realised on time that the future lied in agriculture. In that distant land, he bought a farm at the Atlantic coast and started a hard job of growing fruits, table grapes in particular. Today he has vineyards spanning one hundred thousand acres along the riverside of the River Orange, and our prizewinners are the largest producers of table grapes south of the Sahara. Their company, Aussenkehr Grape Farms, is a worldwide manufacturer of the famous Namibian wine, and they expanded their fruit business also to South America. They are also characterised by another peculiarity: although they live and work so far away from their homeland, they brought up all of their children in the spirit of Orthodoxy and the teachings of Saint Sava and got them married in Serbia and with the Serbs.

For several years they have been devising a strategy for return, developing their business in the Republic of Srpska, and thus helping the economy of that area with their investments, knowledge and experience.