For countries like Ethiopia, where most of their population earns their living with low income, there is no doubt that cooperatives will have indispensable role to ensuring market stability and fair economic benefit in the society. Towards this end, the Ethiopian government currently is working to ensure the maximum benefits of the community on giving particular focus to the youth, women and persons with disability through creating healthy market system in the nation. Many economists usually mentioned that the role of cooperative unions and small and micro enterprises (SMEs) is crucial as both can easily operate with in targeted segments of the society.
Accordingly, the Federal Cooperatives Agency has been set up with the vision to meeting two core targets: To create strong cooperatives that can improve the living standard of its members both in the rural and urban centers and to contribute share to the national economic development through various perspectives such as Agricultural strategies and policy perspectives, Capacity building strategies, Industrial development strategies, Foreign relation and national security policy perspectives, Building of democratic system and International Experience.
To increase the production of the agricultural sector, cooperatives contribute a lot from providing modern technology and inputs up to creating best market choices, financial access and professional support by ensuring volunteer participation and organization as well as transport access to the agricultural products.
For boosting productivity of the sector, the government is working through capacity building, and reforms based on research for ensuring fast and productive service delivering system and fighting to get rid of rent-seeking mentality and practices thereby ensuring transparency and openness through organizing awareness through training.
Through strengthening the existing saving and credit unions as well as collecting finance for investment alongside with the housing construction, some cooperatives were able to participate in real-state investment sector through the working industrial development strategy of cooperatives.
It is clearly cited in the foreign market relations and in our national security programs that boosting export items in a bid to increasing the benefit of cooperatives through value addition of the agricultural and other primary products is crucial thereby to dealing with external actors and countries. This will enable to look forward for strong markets for the exported items. Thus, the contribution of cooperatives in areas of technology transfer, financial and market linkages in abroad are also hoped to improve.
The active participation of cooperatives in the policy and decision making process is useful to build strong democratic culture and in ensuring peace, development and good governance. Direct promotion and participation of cooperatives would enable the market to reach the lower segments of the society in a bid to creating one economic society.
Irish credit union movement representative, Mr. Alan Moore, in his presentation during the 3rd national cooperatives exhibition and bazaar-2016 said that Irish credit unions first offered loan protection and life saving insurances, and this show increased growth of credit unions, generated significant sums of money and the like in the 1960s.
Then after, a pilot micro credit scheme was launched in December 2015, the repayments deducted from welfare income and savings were encouraged which brought key impacts of cooperatives on members through increased financial inclusion- especially, to the lower income, openness and business continuity were the trends that made cooperatives successful, he added.
Having this in mind, the Federal Cooperatives Agency jointly with Wafa Marketing and Promotion Service Organized the 3rd national cooperatives’ exhibition, bazaar and symposium for creating sustainable market linkage between cooperative unions in a bid to promoting inter-regional integration and sustaining the market system as of February 11-16, 2016 under the theme ‘Cooperative Marketing for Fairness’ at the UNECA and continued at the Convention Center.
Opening the five-days exhibition and bazaar President Dr Mulatu Teshome clearly stated that cooperative unions have crucial role to sustaining the market and replacing the export of raw materials with processed and value added products in the long run.
Deputy Premier Demeke Mekonnen on his part said that leadership support is key for ensuring the maximum benefit of cooperatives thereby creating healthy market system.
Demeke added that the country has been under the yoke of poverty and backwardness due to the so far popular oppression and weak governance of the previous regimes. To change such a bad history, the current government is working through drafting legal frameworks that have capacity to improve the livelihood of the public. And it is believed that the contribution of cooperatives is irreplaceable as part of the struggle against poverty reduction.
Demeke further noted that during the first GTP, the sector had contributed a lot to the fast economic growth with an increased number of cooperatives and their members through creating jobs, ensuring the benefit of the youth and women, promoting saving and hard currency flow. Thus, this needs to be further strengthened in the ongoing GTP-II of the nation as effectively as possible.
The premier added that expanding the contribution of cooperatives in industrial transformation, organizing agro-processing and manufacturing industries is taken as one of the focus areas by the government of Ethiopia in the second Growth and Transformation Plan.
Farming and Natural Resources Minister Tefera Derbew also said that cooperatives have vivid role in boosting agricultural production by providing inputs; fertilizers, pesticides, improved seeds and technology to pastorals through creating market linkages.
According to Tefera, currently, the cooperatives are also playing roles in mitigating the El Nino induced drought and in reducing inflation too.
Heads of Tigray, Oromiya, Amara and SNNPs State Bureaus on their parts said that the contribution of Cooperatives in their respective States is high in facing the challenges of the drought.
Federal Cooperatives Agency Director Usman Serur on his part clearly puts the need to extricate people out of the long rooted poverty and cooperatives have irreplaceable role both to the urban population and rural residents in providing products at a reasonable and fair price through protecting unnecessary costs of producers while selling their products. The Agency is aggressively working to ensure broad based benefits of cooperatives and contribute for the national developmental endeavors.
Awach Financing and Saving Credit’s. Soc. General Manager Zerihun Sheleme believes that due to the favorable strategic polices of the government to cooperatives, the gain of cooperative members is increasing through time.
Over 1000 exhibitors, representatives of national cooperative unions, multinational companies, and international organizations have gathered to showcase their products and services. And they have expressed their opinion commonly saying that the exhibition and bazaar will create market link and enable them to share good experiences.