The Cooperative Bill 2020 is set to be amended and realigned to the Kenya Kwanza administration’s bottom-up economic model, Cooperative Alliance of Kenya (CAK) Executive Director Daniel Marube has said.
He said the draft law will be taken to the Cabinet for approval and later tabled before Parliament for debate.
Once passed, Marube said the law will unlock some of the issues facing the Cooperative movement such as the structure and how to strengthen it.
This will give birth to federations along sectors such as finance, coffee, dairy, and housing.
Speaking in Mombasa during this year’s National Cooperative CEOs Workshop, Marube said the law will bring order and sanity in the cooperative movement, giving the example of ICT service providers who will have to be registered before offering services to Saccos.
“We will be able to do value chain adjustments so that agricultural activities can fall into certain structures and support small farmers, offering them education and links to the markets,” he said.
Marube also disclosed that CAK has launched a shared service platform dubbed Coop Tech intended to transform how the cooperative movement presently operates. It is expected that the digital platform will be officially launched in November by President William Ruto.
Alongside it, a national payment system will also be launched that will take care of how Saccos on the platform will be clearing their cheques.
Coop Tech, Marube added, is a tier one core banking system with a very robust digital platform that took seven years to build. It has been tested numerous times and is customized to address the issues facing the cooperative sector.
The biggest advantage of the Coop Tech system, he revealed, is that security features and upgrades will not have to be regularly paid for by the Saccos after a period of time since the upgrades and the security checks will automatically be done from a central position.
“Another good thing about Coop Tech system is that you do not have to have branches anymore once you are on the system. Those on the platform can get services from member Saccos as if they are in their own branches because we are all the same,” he pointed out.
By George Otieno
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