Cooperative Adjustment in a Chnaging Environment in Sub-Saharan Africa - Report of a Study Commissioned by ICA Europe

Abstract

This report is conimissioned by ICA Europe. Cooperative leaders in Europe recognize the difficult situation facing many cooperatives in Africa and have asked themselves how their own organizations better can assist their counterpart organizations in Africa. This report tries to provide some answers to this question in its final chapter. The rapidly changing environment in Africa makes current cooperative development strategies and donor strategies obsolete, and any mobilization of additional resources for cooperative development assistance will have to teke the new situation into account. It was therefore considered necessary to make an analysis of the present situation, outiine, in general terms, a new strategy for cooperative development in Africa, upon which a revised strategy for the donors could be bas^. It is strongly felt that a clear view on how the African cooperatives intend to meet the future, together with a revised cooperative donor strategy, will be a prerequisite for obtaining aid resources from government and international donors. It goes without saying that any strategy for development of the cooperatives in Africa has to be developed by the cooperators themselves, and not by outsiders. However, in order to arrive at a revised role of the donors, we have outlined a proposal for a new strategy for cooperative development in Africa, taking the new circumstances into account. This proposal must therefore only be seen as our contribution to the discussions on the ftiture of cooperatives, presentiy taking place among the Afiican cooperators. It deserves to be repeated that the conclusions and the recommendations of this report are ours and not those of ICA or the ftmder, the Swedish Cooperative Centre. We have hbwever been greatiy assisted by two consultations with the African cooperators; at a seminar in West Africa and at the regional assembly of ICA Africa, recentiy held in Nairobi. We wish to thank all cooperators who gave us their views and comments at these events, enabling us to take them into consideration when preparing the final version of the report. This report provides no final answers. It is a contribution to an ongoing process; a process in which each cooperative society in Afiica will have to make its own analysis of the situation, and find its own answers on how to meet the challenges ahead.