Cooperating Out of Poverty, The renaissance of the African cooperative movement

The history of cooperative development in Africa has resulted into two popular, but very contradictory conclusions. On the one hand, there is the view that cooperatives in Africa have failed to live up to the challenges of developing the continent. On the other hand, there is the opinion that cooperative entrepreneurship is the way forward for African development. This research project was set up to help disentangle these contradictory perceptions that have continuously preoccupied many people, including cooperative members and leaders as well as government and donor agencies. The central objective of the study was thus to make an objective analysis of the state of affairs of the cooperative sector in Africa since the liberalization of the economy in the early 1990s.