Counties should harness cooperatives

Industry, Trade and Cooperatives Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed. President Uhuru Kenyatta has handed all matters of international trade to the Ministry of Industrialisation. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Cooperative entrepreneurship can break the obstacles that young people face in taking a more active and autonomous place in society
  • Cooperatives can create work opportunities and better working conditions.

Many people may not be aware, but one of the strongest and biggest hotel brands globally, Best Western, is a cooperative of more than 4,000 hotels in more than 80 countries.

Closer home, in Rwanda, the Association de l’Esperance des Taxis Motor au Rwanda (Assetamorwa) is a cooperative of motorcycle taxi owners in Kigali, which counts more than 2,500 members.

One of the biggest headaches county governments are dealing with is on how to productively engage young people. 

It’s time to harness the power of cooperatives.

Cooperatives can create work opportunities and better working conditions.

REGULATION

They can help youth to both find work and also gain work experience, as well as offer opportunities for professional and vocational training.

Young people need information on how to establish cooperatives and tap into their rich resource.

The cooperative development role was devolved.

Some counties have done a stellar job at preparing frameworks and policies for taking this responsibility forward.

The existing micro and small enterprises should be organised into cooperatives.

Today, most people still imagine cooperatives are only relevant to farmers.

Yet the scope for operating as a cooperative spans across several sectors of the economy.

AWARENESS
Usually, potential co-operators are unaware of the option to form a cooperative, or of the services and benefits this organisation can offer them.

Therefore, any promotion of the cooperative concept needs to convey the benefits not only to the converted (existing members), but also to the general public.

A positive image of cooperatives needs to be created and disseminated.

Forming and developing these cooperatives will engineer some of the biggest benefits that many businesses cannot achieve on their own.

For instance scale. It is critical the mindset of these individuals is changed so that they begin to see the bigger picture of being able to achieve scale in terms of supply of goods and even delivering services.

As a cooperative, they can negotiate better prices for inputs.

TRAINING SCHOOL
This is the only way they will grow their businesses and create opportunities for training and employment.

In the case of Best Western hotels, they all benefit from collective supplies and standards applied across the whole enterprise, from furnishings to information management systems and even hotel design.

For members of Assetamorwa, they are conscious of the need to help young Rwandans.

The cooperative has therefore established a training school where students learn to be motorcycle drivers, the Highway Code and basics in mechanics.

We need to embrace and promote the enterprise cooperatives concept.

YOUTH

Cooperative entrepreneurship can break the obstacles that young people face in taking a more active and autonomous place in society, and make them take ownership of their initiatives.

Co-operators want to keep on raising awareness about how young people can meet their employment needs and aspirations while contributing to a better society through the creation of co-operatives.

Together and individually, employers’ organisations, workers organisations’, representative bodies and governments, as well as cooperative organisations are in a prime position to widen the use of the cooperative model in all sectors.

I believe it will serve to alleviate the challenge of unemployment.

The writer is the CIC Insurance Group General Manager, Marketing and Distribution