Sharing a brief from The New Vision’s Samuel Sanya’s interview with the Minister for Trade, Industry, and Cooperatives; Ms. Amelia Kyambadde
Cooperatives have faced some challenges from way back in the 1980s due to the political and economic instability.
Key challenges facing cooperatives that she mentioned are :
- Coverage for cooperatives in terms of service delivery is quite low
- Weak Governance capacity on the leaders of the cooperatives
- Inadequate knowledge and skills on cooperatives by members and leaders
- War debts owed to Cooperative unions
- Inadequate capitalization
- Weak management information systems
- Lack of modern equipment and tools for value addition and
- Inadequate storage facilities and infrastructure
Despite the challenges, she said that Government of Uganda’s strategy to revive cooperatives is:
- Policy and Legal reforms
- Re-establishment of the Cooperative Bank
- Compensation of unions that lost property and assets during the wars. She went on to say that this process had began.
- Setting up of a Verification Committee to verify outstanding claims so that the claims are paid
- Skills development and knowledge management
- Conflict resolution and arbitration
- Value addition
She also talked about the need to have and celebrate the International Cooperatives day.
The purpose of International Day of Cooperatives is to increase awareness on cooperatives and promote the movement’s successes and ideals of international solidarity, economic efficiency, equality and world peace.
It brings together cooperatives, civil society, financial institutions, policy makers, regulators, academia and other stakeholders to celebrate and review the current state of the cooperative movement, share challenges/ successful experiences and discuss other pertinent issues affecting Cooperatives.
…click to read New Visions Samuel Sanya’s full article