Promote rural development through cooperatives

By Winnie Muwanguzi

As we are going through the budgeting process, something that should be given much thought is the co-operative.

The co-operative movement in Uganda that started in 1913 faced challenges such as the unfair policies, corruption, mismanagement and loss of assets and investments causing many to collapse in 1971.

However, the advantages they presented prior to their downfall such as subsidised inputs to farmers, increased agricultural production, employment opportunities in co-operatives, functional education for co-operators and bursary schemes to acquisition of building loans  and ensuring that farmers got better prices for their agricultural produce makes farmers want co-operatives revived.

The market information that would be given to farmers and linking them to markets solved the many losses they used to incur while selling through middle men. Today, the issue of middle men taking advantage of the farmers is trending and it is slowing rural development. 

In Uganda, about 94% of Ugandans are interested in the revival of co-operatives and know what the co-operatives should put emphasis on. And more than 15 million people are directly and indirectly employed by the 30,000 registered co-operatives related to agriculture savings and credit co-operatives in the East African Community.  With the overwhelmingly increasing number of un employed youths between the age of 18 to 30 reaching 62%, co-operatives are necessary for transforming Uganda to a middle-income country by 2020. 

Achieving rural development shall require the state to play her role in this case revive co-operatives while citizens must demand that Government becomes more accountable to them by establishing the necessary infrastructure for efficient and effective co-operatives through laws, policies, human capital, financial resources and the removal of bureaucratic ambiguities.  There is need for a comprehensive review of the legal and policy framework so as to provide a favourable environment for the co-operative movement to thrive.

The Government has made efforts to revive the co-operatives but more needs to be done by allocating enough funds to facilitate the growth of co-operatives.

In the Financial Year 2015/16, sh5.84b was released to facilitate co-operative growth and development, however, much of the released budget was to compensate Bugisu Co-operative Union not attending to the main sector objectives which is to strengthen the co-operative movement in Uganda.

Co-operatives can facilitate access to credit, market for produce and enhance opportunities for generating income. The projections for Financial Year 2017/18 are sh3.695b, however, the subsector is still an underfunded priority.

Therefore, efforts should be focused on consistent training and capacity building of co-operative societies, especially in leadership, governance, financial services and enhancing their management skills in co-operatives and value chain. 

In addition, the Government needs to profile existing co-operatives and by so including farmer co-operatives that are the majority.

These can enhance opportunities for generating income and strengthening the access to support from different development partners as we endeavour to achieve to rural development.

The writer is the programme manager of the African Centre for Trade and Development