Cooperatives and social solidarity enterprises in Africa and elsewhere have unique values to add to the global economy and must be allowed space to shine and make their contribution, Uhuru Chief Executive Officer Leonard Okello said.
Speaking to a continental gathering of cooperators at a South African conference, Okello said cooperative values, principles and social solidarity work well within the now much-touted African Ubuntu – or humanity — philosophy, through a sense of mutualism in which everyone brings in and receives value.
That was as he gave a keynote address to the second edition of the annual International Conference on Cooperatives and Social Solidarity Economies [CCSE]. It was organised by the Africa Cooperatives Institute of South Africa (ACI) of Johannesburg but he spoke via Zoom from Kampala.
Conferences such as the CCSE are important avenues to bring together the strength of cooperatives on the African continent and can be solid galvanizing fora for even faster development.
“These conferences are our opportunity to deepen and translate such thoughts into functional actions for the good of our African peoples in particular, and the international cooperative movement at large,” Okello said.
Since World War II, many conferences have been held to address various issues of development, scoring some successes, but have still left the unanswered question of “what has really changed in the daily lives of the peoples for and whose behalf we have met and debated at the conference?”
Cooperatives are different in addressing development issues, Okello opined.
“We are about self-help and self-responsibility as detailed in the cooperative principles. We are about people-centred development.”
Okello spoke for about half an hour and was added extra time to address concerns from the public who attended in person and others who connected via the internet.
He said CCSE meetings must interest themselves in the search for simple, practical, and productive people-centered solutions that will change lives for the better for everyone.
Uhuru, which he heads, has over the years worked to provide solutions for the growth of cooperatives in Uganda and beyond.
He spoke of the tools the agency has used including the cooperative monitoring one www.coopprofiler.com which applies a resilience measurement index to examine performance.
He asked African cooperatives to take interest in this tool, saying it will help them grow.
On the Africa Continental Free Trade Area protocol signed by recently by continental governments, Okello said his Institute has developed an e-Commerce platform www.sokoniplace.com for cooperatives to market their products and services.
More networking is needed to build synergies and share excellencies such as those tools, saying there might be many more elsewhere that have simply not been recognised.
Cooperatives are such powerful tools in economic transformation, they contribute 45 percent of Kenya’s GDP, Okello said.
To generate, communicate and influence decisions that work best for Pan-African cooperators, Okello said the Uhuru Institute had launched www.thecooperator.news, which carries reports from Uganda and elsewhere.
He asked participants to not only follow news via this platform but also send in reports and opinions from their own home countries.
Okello also spoke of the Cooperator magazine, published monthly, some of whose articles have caused the government to compensate Ugandan cooperatives that lost properties during the country’s political mayhem.
Moves have also been made to try and revive the now defunct Ugandan Cooperative Bank that was closed in unclear circumstances over 20 years ago.
Okello said it is important for cooperatives to write and tell their own stories.
“If we don’t talk about ourselves as cooperators, nobody will talk about, us,” he said.
Over the coming year, the Uhuru Institute will invite African cooperators to launch the tools mentioned above, Okello said, and asked members across the continent to acquire a shareholding stake in them.
Dr Julia Modise from North-West University of South Africa urged African cooperatives to hold exhibitions for their products and services, saying this could help in the formation of partnerships to deliver goods and services.
The annual conference aims to contribute to knowledge on cooperatives and the solidarity economy and brings together academics and practitioners from around Africa and beyond.
Some of the topics discussed during the two-day meeting included, Cooperatives in Africa; Member Education in Cooperatives; Community Development through Cooperatives; Policy Support for Cooperatives; Critical perspectives on Cooperative Leadership; The cooperative Identity; Financing start-up Cooperatives.
Other topics were: Youth and Cooperatives; Cooperatives and the 4th Industrial Revolution; Data on Cooperative Development; New Cooperatives models: Network, Platform, Community, Social, Food, and Housing; Replicating Successful Cooperative Models; and Cooperatives, Climate Change, Resilience and Inclusion.
https://thecooperator.news/south-africa-to-host-major-conference-on-cooperatives-in-africa/
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