Archive for category: sugar cane out-grower

Kampala, Uganda: The Uganda Peoples Defense Forces Savings and credit scheme – Wazalendo has announced it is going to embark on an impact assessment of all loans given out to its members since the SACCO’s inception, as a way of appraising the SACCO’s performance in regard to uplifting the social welfare of its members.

In an interview with theCooperator, Wazalendo’s board chairperson Maj.Gen.Sam Kavuma noted that since its inception in 2005, Wazalendo has disbursed over Shs.890billion to its members and that it was now time to take stock of what the money had done.

“In Wazalendo, we don’t make losses because we lend only to our members in active service. But now we want to find out if our money is making a positive difference in our members’ lives, and if not, what we can do about it going forward. That is why we are thinking of carrying out an evaluation impact assessment on the cumulative loans given out so far since 2007,” he explained.

Kavuma said the army will conduct the evaluation exercise in even the remotest of villages, wherever its officers come from. He said he has always advised members who borrow money to desist from investing their monies on “things that appear nice, cost millions of money but don’t make any returns.”

“You find someone buying a very expensive phone at say shs.3million, yet if that person invested the 3million in goats, he would have purchased at least 30 goats. Considering that a goat produces twice in a year, he would have 90 goats in a year and over 900 goats in 10 years. Would that person still be poor?” he asked, rhetorically.

He warned members against investing their borrowed money on liabilities, noting that the essence of borrowing should be to invest in things that have long-term returns. “A member borrows money and buys a car and even before he drives it, he is told the tyres are old, he needs new ones, he needs fuel, third party and so on. The car starts consuming your money even before you reach home. The car may even be stolen before you reach home as you boast to friends in a bar,” he said.

He urged members to invest in assets – things that have returns, like poultry, cows, goats piggery. “Invest in things that pay you back, either daily, weekly, monthly or annually,” he advised.

With a membership of over 67,000 members, Wazalendo remains Uganda’s biggest and arguably most successful SACCO. It is also the 6th biggest on the continent.

At its annual General Meeting last year held in Lugazi, the SACCO announced it had made a profit of shs.31.1 billion that was given out as dividends to its members.

“We can’t say we don’t have issues as Wazalendo. But as a savings scheme we are doing well, save for issues such as deaths, desertions, and retirements that are unavoidable,” said Kavuma.

He explained that when someone dies, deserts or retires, it affects the SACCO’s numbers not only in terms of membership size, but also in savings. “When someone retires he/she gets all his shares and savings and goes away and that is automatically a reduction. When they desert, it means we’ve lost out on savings. And when a member dies, all savings and shares are offset. All these affect the growth of the scheme,” he noted.

As a buffer against such eventualities, Wazalendo has put in place a Loan Protection Fund (LPF) that acts us its internal insurance. “Any member who gets a loan is charged 2% to cater for deaths and desertions. That is why when a member dies or deserts, we don’t follow his/her family,” Kavuma explained.

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Bishop Stuart University(BSU) has announced it is moving to formally register an agribusiness incubation center, with a view of developing its student agri-business ideas for sale as commercial products.

The announcement was made by Prof. Mauda Kamatenesi, the University’s Vice-Chancellor following the University’s triumph as best exhibitor at the Regional Universities’ Forum for capacity building in agriculture (RUFORUM) expo in Ghana last month.

BSU beat 121 other African universities at the University of Cape Coast Ghana, from 2nd-6th December 2019, Dr. Rebecca Kalibwani, the principal investigator-in-charge of the BSU Agribusiness Incubation Hub (AIH) attributed the University’s win to their business incubation model, which he referred to as “unique.”

Kalibwani told theCooperator that with support from development partners, the University allows students to generate their own business ideas, from which it identifies outstanding ones that it then finances to fully develop and become competitive.

One such partner is AVSI. The Dutch foundation has partnered with BSU since 2017, and has since invested close to shs.200million in supporting the University’s agri-business programs. This year, it (AVSI) has pledged to offer startup funding of shs.5million to 10 students with the best agri-business ideas.

BSU is a member of the African agribusiness incubators’ network, and Kalibwani says the University is strongly oriented towards agri-business skills development.

“The foundation(AVSI) supports our skills development component. Together, we believe that imparting practical skills to our students is one way we can contribute to solving the unemployment problem, by producing job-creators and not merely job-seekers,” he says.

One of the University’s agri-business alumnus is James Katumbi, now a thriving producer of beetroot yogurt in Mbarara town. He uses local ingredients – alviera, mulling, beetroot, hibiscus, lemon, and milk to produce his yogurt, and says he’s already attracting a special market.

“Yogurt has been there but we have added a herbal aspect to it. In Africa we don’t have any herbal yogurt so I am fighting hanger but also catering for vulnerable people like girls who bleed a lot during their menstrual periods, who need to take a lot of beetroot. Here, they take it indirectly in the yogurt,” Katumba explains.

Katumba is unequivocal about the importance of practical education programs, arguing like Kalibwani, that only they can address the challenge of unemployment. To his fellow youth, he says:

“Stop lamenting about jobs just change the mindset to venture into practical courses because at the end you will not only graduate with a degree but also with a project that can earn you money.”

Kamatenesi now believes it’s high time the University and its students cashed in on their agri-business potential:

“We are processing URSB (Uganda Registration Services Bureau) and UNBS (Uganda National Bureau of Standards) numbers to register as a company, because we’re developing our students’ ideas into bankable agri-business solutions that should be paid for,” she says.

The vice-chancellor encouraged students to particularly focus on developing ideas that provide solutions for Uganda’s industrial needs, noting that industrial innovation was the future. “We must set our sights beyond BSU to the whole country now,” she says.

At the expo in Ghana, apart from the certificate, the BSU student exhibitors were awarded $200. “We’re motivated to aim for and compete at even bigger platforms,” Kamatenesi says.

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A small town in the center of Germany has given the world a model for how to generate power on their terms. It all started back in 2005 in Wolfhagen, Germany when the city’s government decided not to renew a contract agreement with private company E.ON. The city and the people decided they would instead generate power through a public company – Stadtwerke Wolfhagen.

Things progressed in 2008 when everyone decided that by 2015, all household electricity will be provided from local renewable resources. The town committed to building a wind farm and solar park. To help pay for the project, the town decided to enlist the help of the citizens for a co-owned, co-produced energy system. This form of cooperative participation would allow the community to take part in a citizen-led movement, BürgerEnergieGenossenschaft, (BEG Wolfhagen), for a clean renewable town.

Martin Rühl, Director of the public company explained in 2011:

“Through the cooperative participation, we want to make the citizens not only co-owners and co-earners but through the form of direct participation in the Stadtwerke, also co-decisionmakers. For future projects, citizens and electricity customers will be at the table from the very beginning.”

The co-op was official back in 2012 by citizens that were in favor of the wind farm, and now they own 25% of the energy company. The more than 800 citizens who are members, are part of a company with a net worth of €3.9 million and are also involved in the decision-making process. Two of the co-op’s nine board members represent the citizens with voting rights on all issues. These include electricity production and supply for the region, along with energy prices and reinvestment.

The cooperative also has an energy-saving fund that receives funds directly from the profitable energy company. The fund is designed to support citizen-led initiatives and strategies for increasing energy efficiency, including innovative ways for achieving decarbonization.

As the original report states, this shows that the rapid decarbonization of our energy supply is wholly compatible with new models of economic democracy. “Strong and effective action to address the climate crisis can be met through processes of collective empowerment, without resorting to ecological authoritarianism.”

Instead of focusing on the bottom line of profits, which privately-owned companies do, this hybrid model involves the common interest of the community. We are in the middle of the most important climate crisis in human history. As humans, we cannot, and certainly should not sit back and allow a select few who have money to make decisions for all. It’s not about an uprising against power, instead of working together. This will take some of the pressure off of the governments from having to do everything, and it allows the common people to become more involved. Putting their money into things to help the planet, rather than “taxes,” that are a big mystery where that money goes. Global warming affects everyone, it’s time “everyone” has a say in how we go about rectifying it.

This story was first published via https://www.intelligentliving.co/german-town-powers-itself-community-co-op/

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In Summary

• There are over 4.97 million individuals as well as corporate or institutional members in SACCOs.
• Of the individual members, 60.65 per cent are men, while 34.23 per cent are women

More men in Kenya join Saccos than women, which defies the gender demographics in a country with slightly more women than men.

The youth are also increasingly involved in Sacco activities, which has in the past been perceived as a preserve of the old.

These are the findings of the Sacco Subsector Demographic Study Report 2019 that was launched last Saturday.

The Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (Sasra) undertook the study, the first ever, on the 174 licensed deposit-taking Saccos (DT-Saccos) as at December 2018 to establish the demographic composition and distribution of Sacco membership.

There are over 4.97 million natural persons (individuals) as well as corporate or institutional members among the DT-Saccos.

Among the 4.97 million members, 4.78 million are individuals representing 96.2 per cent of the total membership.

Of the individual members, 60.65 per cent are men while 34.23 per cent are women.

Another 5.12 per cent were not disclosed as either male or female, meaning they may have not answered some questions about gender right during the study.

“The imbalance may however be attributed to the probable dominance by the male gender in key socio-economic activities, from which Saccos traditionally draw their membership such as agricultural production (dairy, tea, coffee production, etc); or formal employment opportunities,” reads the report in part.

The youth (aged between 18 and 35) account for 30.86 per cent of the total individual members, representing almost a third.

“This demystifies the public rhetoric that Sacco membership has no place for the youth,” the report reads.

Sasra chair John Munuve on Thursday said the Sacco subsector wants to eventually be able to grow its own financial base so as to transact any business without necessarily making reference to any other person or entity, especially banks.

“We know there will be a lot of resistance because nobody would like to sign away money. Banks benefit from the wealth of Saccos because all the clearing is done there,” said Munuve.

Munuve asked Cooperatives PS Ali Noor Ismail to help the Sacco subsector achieve that dream.

PS Noor said Cabinet had already approved the national cooperatives policy.

“The proposed regulations of the non-deposit taking Saccos has also been approved by the Cabinet,” the PS said.

The PS also announced that the establishment of a full investigations unit that will be domiciled in Sasra has been approved.

The unit will deal with issues of fraud, which the Saccos have been victims of on numerous occasions.

The unit will also deal with cases where individuals start Saccos, collect money from members and then disappear with the money, leaving the savers helpless.

Noor said he was happy that more youth were showing interest in the saving culture but decried the low number of women in Saccos.

“We should create an enabling environment for more women to join Saccos even in the leadership positions.

“But you women should also fight for these positions. You should not wait for them to be handed to you,” he said.

(Source/ The Star)

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