By Fredrick Odiero
Kisumu County is mulling over the merger of small and uneconomical cooperatives in order to harness their full potential.
Chief Officer in charge of Co-operatives, Alphonse Ouya, said though the economic viability of the cooperatives straddles across many sectors, they are however not fully utilized.
The sectors include rice, cotton, fish, and sugarcane, dairy and transport.
With more than 100 registered non-performing Co-operatives in this Sector, Ouya said they are working towards merger and revitalization of the Co-operatives through an ongoing identification and capacity-building programme across the County.
Out of the 634 cooperatives registered in 2021, only 385 can be traced, adding that even those identified were either active or semi-active and dormant.
Some of the hurdles affecting the growth of the movement in the region, according to Ouya, include attitudinal change especially on savings culture, power struggles in co-operatives, Mergers of societies and Dependency Syndrome.
He said there still exists a high potential for cotton production in the county and farmers are being mobilized to go back to cotton growing,
Cotton stores in the county are still intact and most of the cotton societies have transformed to multipurpose societies so that apart from promoting cotton though in a small scale including distribution of seeds from AFA are exploring other areas of diversification.
Ouya underscored the need for the groups and individuals to embrace zero grazing, savings, and commercial agriculture and the need by leaders to promote cooperatives in the region.
The County Government, he noted, has capacity built members but called on the greater involvement of the political leadership in the entire process of cooperative growth and development.
This, he believes, would play a critical role in marketing products such as coffee, sugarcane, rice, dairy products, fish, and cotton.
“The County government is promoting dairy farming through provision of dairy animals to members of the Co-operative among others such as milk coolers, freezers for improvement of dairy farming activities” he says.
Ouya says the societies have a staff well trained on value addition and is able to make yoghurt.
Dunga Fishermen Cooperative Society is one such entity directly involved in fish marketing, buying fish from fishermen alongside other buyers and then sells it to various customers.
Ouya says the society’s proximity to Kisumu City provides a good marketing opportunity for the products.
The chief officer says that the county government of Kisumu has also secured coolers for Dunga fcs, Ogal fcs, Kaloka fcs and Asat fcs
“The unions also organize training of their members,” he told Sacco Review.
The co-operatives, he said have been supported by partners like FAO and others which included plowing and providing farm inputs, rice mill the National Irrigation Authority (NIA), and packaging machines to the societies.
Rice marketing was a challenge to the cooperatives as farmers preferred to deal with middlemen who were paying them cash for rice taken where buyers were coming from as far as Uganda.
He says most of the rice instead of being milled at the local mills was transported by middlemen to other places for milling packaging and marketing.
“So far the county government has partnered with KNTC to purchase rice from farmers at Sh42,” he stated.
Kisumu County, according to Ouya is among those where cotton production was a major activity that created several on-farm and off-farm employment.
He says cotton cooperatives were actively involved in the collection and marketing of cotton to Kibo’s ginnery, besides being involved in the distribution of various farm inputs to the cotton farmers.
Cooperative at a glance
- Share Capital base 2,216,483,029
- Membership of over 108,979
- 5 active Dairy Cooperatives
- Each society collects 150 litres sold at Sh80 per litre
- Five active fishermen cooperative societies
- Not directly involved in fish marketing
- Over 17,500 riders in Kisumu
- 15 registered housing cooperative societies
- 7 active cotton societies and one cooperative union
- 5 major SACCOs licensed by SASRA to operate FOSA
- Notable ones include Jumuika, Kite, Agrochem, Koru and Nyando
- 9 active rice co-operative societies
