Rural Cooperation

No person, no country in the world, irrespective of its stage of development, is fully self-sufficient. Cooperation brings together peoples and nations and facilitates peaceful co-existence.' So begins Rural Cooperation In The Cooperative Movement In Tanzania, what will undoubtedly be seen as a seminal work in the field. The author has lectured a course on Rural Cooperation in Tanzania at the University of Dar es Salaam for seven consecutive years, but lack of appropriate books with adequate coverage of the course content obliged him to conduct extensive research on cooperation and cooperatives. The resulting book covers the entire field and addresses the subject by providing a foundation on which wider study can be based. It is intended to make its readers aware of the strategies and challenges of cooperation and has a wider relevance, as it will be useful to policy makers in the cooperative sector, which is a significant part of the private sector in Tanzania, and indeed in most African countries. By June 2008, there were 2614 agricultural marketing cooperative societies, 4780 savings and credits cooperative societies, 71 livestock cooperative societies, 129 fishing cooperative societies, 11 housing cooperative societies, 3 mining cooperative societies, 185 industrial cooperative societies, 98 water irrigation cooperative societies, 4 transport cooperative societies, 103 consumer cooperative societies, and 553 service and other cooperative societies; perfectly illustrative of the movement's scope and the need to pay it careful attention. The topics included make it appropriate for use in Sociology, Rural Development, Marketing, Development Studies and studies in other specialties in the Social Sciences. From an exploration of the cooperative movement's various international iterations to a perspicacious survey of the history of cooperatives in Tanzania, Dr. Lyimo highlights the issues facing farmers and business people and illustrates the way in which cooperative effort- enterprises that put people, and not capital, at the center of their business- can not only improve members' economic power in bargaining for better marketing conditions and prices, but also to increase employment opportunities, thereby improving the standard of living for a large number of people. In these times of penury and economic disenfranchisement, this book not only fills the information gap, but provides, in the ultimate chapters, 'Procedures for Organizing a Cooperative Society', and 'Managing Rural Cooperative Societies', the basic principles and advice for those considering the cooperative model as the best means of improving their economic viability.