The first roll-out of My.Coop in the Northern Province of Zambia

My.Coop – Managing your agricultural cooperative training package has been translated into Bemba and rolled out for the first time in the Northern Province of Zambia.

News | 28 November 2018
In Zambia, after the State-controlled cooperative development in the 1970s and 1980s, cooperatives have struggled to become autonomous and sustainable enterprises. Although there are more than 50,000 registered primary cooperatives, one-third of them are defunct. As an ILO working paper notes, the majority of the active cooperatives are weak with regard to their income base and organizational structures. One key constraint to the performance of cooperatives is inadequate entrepreneurial and business management skills.

In this context, Agriterra, in collaboration with Cotton Association of Zambia, has organized a number of My.Coop trainings with organised farmers in the cotton sector in the Central and Southern Provinces. My.Coop is a training programme on the management of agricultural cooperatives, developed through a partnership of several organizations including the ILO, the FAO, the International Training Centre of the ILO, Agriterra, the Royal Tropical Institute and the Wageningen University and Research Centre.

For the roll-out in the Northern Province, My.Coop training package was translated into Bemba, a local language. The first training workshop was organized from 12-14 November 2018 by Agriterra and the Northern Province Cooperative and Marketing Union (NPCMU), which represents over 2,300 primary cooperatives and 70,000 farmers.

Participants of the training
Participants to the training included: board members and managers of NPCMU; board members of five NPCMU-affiliated district cooperative unions; and five district cooperative officers and cooperative inspectors. The training was facilitated by Dik van de Koolwijk, Trainer/Advisor at Agriterra, and co-facilitated by Chifula Kalisha and Brenda Sianangama, Business Advisors at Agriterra Zambia.

The main focus of the training was on the first two modules of the My.Coop training package: basics of an agricultural cooperative; and service provision. In particular, the linkages and specific roles and responsibilities per tier – at the levels of primary cooperative, district cooperative union and provincial cooperative union – were discussed. After discussions on the basic principles of a cooperative and the analysis of cassava and maize value chains, participants identified needs of cooperatives’ members and prioritized three services the district cooperative unions should focus on: input-supply, training and marketing. Then based on a SWOT analysis, participants elaborated an action plan for each district cooperative union. Provision of training to primary cooperatives was among the key components of the developed action plans.

Five government officers and selected lead farmers also discussed how My.Coop could be rolled out more widely and what modules and approaches could work best. Consequently, participants agreed on a basic framework for the wider roll-out of My.Coop to be scheduled for March-April 2019.

---------
My.Coop is a training package and programme on the management of agricultural cooperatives, developed through a partnership of several organizations including the ILO, the FAO, the International Training Centre of the ILO, Agriterra, the Royal Tropical Institute and the Wageningen University and Research Centre. As of 2018, at least 64 countries and 154 organizations from around the world have participated in a My.Coop training of trainers (ToT) or made use of the materials.

For full modules see
our website or the online platform
For more information on the My.Coop adaptation and implementation, see the
guide for potential users and the stock-taking brief from 2012-2017