Despite the cooperative movement in Kilifi County doing well, especially the vibrant sacco sector, the agricultural cooperatives have however been faced with challenges that hindered their growth, Mr. George Mwangiri, Chief Officer, Cooperative Development Kilifi County has stated.
Some of the factors that stalled these cooperatives from scaling up included lack of adequate policies, legislations and systems that had to first quickly be addressed in order for such cooperatives to grow.
“Marketing of agricultural products has been a problem considering they are mostly seasonal with a time frame. Products such as mango and milk have to be sold fast before they go bad.” He stated.
Kilifi County, Mr. Mwangiri revealed has however laid down measures such as enhanced training, capacity building and creation of marketing strategies and models that will ensure the agricultural products get market and the cooperatives come back to life.
The county as at the end of 2022 had 309 registered cooperatives with a good number of them being the agricultural societies.
“As a county, we are working on a county cooperative bill that is going to be tailor made for our societies and help in their running. We encourage our cooperatives to automate their services in order to increase productivity and efficiency in service delivery.” He stated.
Additionally, Mr. Mwangiri said automating the cooperative movement in the county will grant it digital data of exactly how many cooperatives existed in the county, the number of members they have, how much each cooperative has, their pending loans, liabilities among others that will greatly enhance service delivery and provide a platform to establish how to salvage a troubled society before it died.
Speaking on how to tap on the youth, especially the bodaboda sector, he said the county government was running a program aimed at channeling the sector into the cooperative world and that the county presently had about ten thousand bodabodas with only 167 in saccos.
“We plan to have cooperative societies in every ward. Currently there are eleven societies for the bodabodas in areas such as Mtwapa, Mwarakaya, and Sokoni. The registered cooperatives in the wards will help both empower our young people and regulate the vibrant sector.” He added.
The next program planned by the county after the bodaboda project is to similarly have a women’s cooperative societies in each ward.
The Chief Officer expressed optimism on the future of cooperatives considering the joint efforts by both the national and the county governments to scale up cooperatives and SME’s stating that cooperatives were about the people and it was where the bottom-up approach was going to be realized.
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