Empowering the grassroot communities

As a continuation on my search for appropriate tools that partners can use to implement “building local democracy” I will in this article examine the history and development of the cooperative movement in Uganda.

Unlike in Denmark and the rest of Europe, cooperative movement in Africa and in Uganda in particular is a result of a legacy of the intentions of the colonial governments. The use of barter trade as a medium for economic exchange was changed at the introduction of cotton and other cash crops to a cash economy in 1903. Non-nationals especially Indians got involved in the buying of both cotton and food crops from the peasant farmers and exporting to Britain, the colonial power at that time. The mercantile system developed very fast as the elite of local traders joined the non-traditionals in monopolizing trade in the cotton industry and general commerce. This did not favor the peasant farmers. Very soon they became price-takers and the days colonial government had not established any form of law to protect them.

Massy Moses Kasule

Peasant farmers began to organise themselves into association and cooperative societies, the first kind outside the traditional settings, in order to market their own crop and have some form of influence on the prices. The first cooperative society in Uganda was recorded in 1913, some Baganda peasant farmers in Ssingo county under the names of Kinakulya Growers Co-operative society. Their primary purpose was to “empower the peasant farmers in determining the terms of sale of their products”. Secondly, they wanted to fight the exploitative forces from colonial administration whose interests were to see that natives specialized in the production of export crops without any influence on the marketing of their crops.

It was the colonial government which encouraged and educated farmers on the need to grow cotton and coffee to generate foreign currency for development. Yet the same government and the cotton traders were “wary” and skeptical of the emergence of these cooperatives. The fears were that the cooperatives would be used for political agitation against government. Thus the colonial government set up an investigation in order to establish whether there was a need for a cooperative legislation.

Cooperative Legislation
There had been no cooperative law at the time in Uganda in 1913. Only in 1946, 33 years after the movement inception, the colonial government recognized the cooperatives through the “Cooperative Ordinance of 1946”. The purpose of the legislation was to help members control and manage their societies more effectively.

The other obvious interest of the legislation was for the colonial government to watch on the political aspects of the movement on issues like capacity to mobilize, protest and agitate. By all means, one can say that this was the beginning of political intervention and control of the cooperative movement by the government in the country. The 1946 cooperative ordinance was amended in 1952. This gave more autonomy and success to the cooperative movement. It included removal of price discrimination against African farmers and also gave access to agro-processing to the same farmers.

Political Interference sets in
After the attainment of political independence from Britain in 1962, the cooperative movement continued to expand as well as forming alliances with the new political setups (political parties). The original cooperatives leaders joined politics and new leaders came in. They began to see the cooperatives as transit institutions to political power.

From this point onwards the cooperatives became more politicized and as members became discontented the government of the day put up another cooperative act. This time it was prohibitive to all features of autonomy and consolidated a direct ministerial control over the affairs of cooperatives. The act gave monopoly powers to cooperatives in crop marketing. Summarily the cooperatives become extended arms or agent of government control in trade and commerce, through marketing boards, a direct reversal of the 1952 cooperative ordinance amendments. The ordinary peasant farmers were again left to be price-takers, thus losing control of the cooperatives contrary to the seven universal cooperative principles. By 1970 the cooperative movement had reached its lowest point and completely disintegrated by 1995.

Failure of cooperatives/ lessons learnt
The blame in the failures in the performance of cooperative movement in developing countries was squarely put on the excessive control of the economy by the state and state political interference in the management of the cooperative societies. The cooperatives and state leaders lost focus as well.

In my next article in the series of “Empowering the grassroots communities” I will examine the causes of the failure of the cooperative in Uganda and its impact on development in comparison to success of the Danish cooperative movement.