By Meshack Ngangi
History will remember June 2023 as a milestone-marking month since the first-ever Co-operative Movement Stakeholders’ Annual Conference was held in Mombasa between the 13th and 15th. The Co-operative University of Kenya organized this transformative event in collaboration with the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Co-operatives and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Development.
The conference theme Co-operative Business Model for Socio-Economic Transformation closely aligns with the government’s agenda and its principal focus leveraged on optimizing the foundational tenets of the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA). This well-curated theme goes deeper than the scribbled words. It powerfully advocates for vibrancy in the co-operative sector by calling all stakeholders to harness and utilize its unlimited potential to unlock economic gateways in diversely distributed value chains under which co-operatives operate.
Speaking at the conference, the Co-operatives and MSMEs Development Cabinet Secretary, Hon. Simon Chelugui, outlined that the co-operative movement has a core mandate in Kenya’s economy and has proven to be a turn-around sector that has impacted the lives of millions of Kenyans through economic empowerment. In addition, he highlighted the Ministry’s devotion to ensuring that policy structures are developed to guarantee the sustainability of co-operatives and promise a streamlined future through the Co-operative Amendment Bill 2023.
At the conference, delegates representing worker co-operatives, transport co-operatives, housing co-operatives, mining and blue economy co-operatives, and platform co-operatives shared their experiences through plenary discussions. Also, this game-changing stakeholder’s conference imparted new insights to revamp and reenergize the co-operative sector through presentations delivered by vastly knowledgeable speakers vouched from profound industry leaders and front-running champions of co-operatives.
From the conference, the economic revolution of our country has been pegged on the transformative role of the co-operative movement, which ranks first in Africa and seventh (7th) globally. The topics of discourses in the three-day event traversed the practices and opportunities of the co-operative business model, new frontiers for co-operative development, technology, and cyber security.
More areas of the conference engagements included expanding the co-operative enterprise in the East and Central African region, opportunities for export marketing and farmer financing, and CUK’s facilitative role in co-operative development, among others. Altogether, these tailored topics converged at the point of farmer co-operatives through value addition and aggregation of produce within the precincts of well-facilitated market systems.
The Ministry, government representatives, co-operative leaders, and delegates of the Co-operative Movement Stakeholder’s Conference hailed the efforts of The Co-operative University of Kenya through its administration in initiating, organizing, and overseeing the success of the conference since it created an incredible impact among the co-operators. In the same spirit, CUK appreciated the conference attendees and, with great regard, acknowledged the support of different event partners and sponsors, including the International Labour Organization, Co-operative Bank, Safaricom, Sidian Bank, CIC Group, and New KPCU.
