ETHIOPIA: Cooperatives championed amid NGO restrictions
ADDIS ABABA, 8 November 2012 (IRIN) - As Ethiopia imposes increasing
restrictions on foreign-backed NGOs, cooperatives - which have boosted the
country’s coffee industry - are being championed as a preferred model for
economic development.
NGOs have been active in Ethiopia for roughly 40 years, yet the country
still ranks in the world’s seventh percentile in terms of health, education
and living standards, according to the
<
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/ETH.html> UN Development
Programme’s human development index. This has led to questions about the
effectiveness of NGOs - especially those that are foreign-backed - in
creating tangible, long-term progress.
By contrast, say development observers and government advisers, the
cooperative model gives ownership of development issues to those affected by
them, creating incentives for lasting change. “Cooperatives are businesses
owned and run by and for their members… They have an equal say in what the
business does and a share in the profits,” according to the
<
http://2012.coop/en> International Cooperative Alliance (ICA).
Ethiopia’s coffee industry has recently seen significant growth, thanks in
part to indigenous coffee cooperatives - demonstrating, advocates say,
cooperatives’ superiority to NGO assistance.
But others argue that cooperatives model on its own isn’t capable of
achieving long-term sustainability, and that many cooperatives remain
reliant on NGOs for support. Success, they say, will depend on the combined
efforts of cooperatives, NGOs and the Ethiopian government, and even foreign
government assistance, where appropriate.
Fraught political history
Both cooperatives and NGOs have had fraught relationships with Ethiopia’s
political establishment, with cooperatives once perceived as an arm of the
government and NGOs now seen as agents of foreign influence.
The cooperative movement in Ethiopia emerged in 1950s, during an effort to
transition from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture. In the 1970s,
under Mengistu Haile Mariam’s socialist-inspired Derg regime, cooperatives
were used to implement a series of radical policies, such as the March 1975
Land Reform Bill, which outlawed private land ownership. Farmers were forced
to join cooperatives and give up land for collective use; as a result,
cooperatives became very unpopular.
The 1991 rebellion that ousted Mengistu paved the way for more democratic,
member-constituted cooperatives, even as the government itself came under
criticism over its commitment to democracy. General assembly members were
elected to determine cooperatives’ policies, and cooperatives began to
adhere to the principles of the ICA.
Over a decade later, NGOs became targets of government ire. Several were
perceived as assisting Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s political opponents
during the 2005 election, which nearly saw Meles’s defeat, according to
Stephan Klingelhofer, senior vice president at Washington-based the
<
http://www.icnl.org/> International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law.
In the following years, members of organizations such as the Ethiopian Human
Rights Council and the Swiss branch of Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) faced
arrests and detentions. The International Committee of the Red Cross and MSF
Belgium were expelled by the government in August and September 2007.
In February 2009, the government adopted the
<
http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/ethiopia.html> Proclamation to Provide
for the Registration and Regulation of Charities and Societies, which
restricted the activities of NGOs receiving more than 10 percent of their
financing from foreign sources. Over the past six months, the restrictions
have expanded, Klingelhofer said.
Concerns about dependency
These tensions are now bearing out in how cooperatives and NGOs are viewed.
As the successful strategies used by coffee cooperatives are applied to
bolster other agricultural sectors - including dairy, wheat and livestock -
cooperatives are increasingly seen as alternatives to the kinds of
assistance offered by NGOs.
Particularly problematic is that many NGOs are foreign-backed and are not
member-oriented, critics say.
“It’s a problem of dependency syndrome,” said Mesay Kassaye, who works for
the <
http://www.costa.co.uk/costa-foundation/> Costa Foundation, which
assists coffee cooperatives. Kassaye previously worked for the NGO
<
http://www.selfhelpafrica.org/> Self Help Africa and argues that too few
NGOs promote self-sufficiency. “An NGO would bring all things, so that the
community remained like beggars, with no role in development.”
Programmes often collapsed when NGOs departed, and some NGOs channel up to
75 percent of their budgets to administrative costs, he says. Cooperatives
are an improvement because Ethiopia’s chronic problems are better tackled by
the long-term capacity-building that cooperatives promote, he contends.
This view is shared by Haile Gebre, who is regarded as the father of
Ethiopia’s cooperatives. He headed the government’s Bureau for Cooperatives
in the 1990s, and his policies have resulted in the way cooperatives
function today. He concedes the issue is not quite black-and-white: “Nothing
is totally wrong or fair - things are relative,” he said.
“But if I’d been president of Ethiopia in 1973, I’ve have banned NGOs from
Ethiopia.”
NGOs are good for providing temporary support after catastrophes, but for
poverty, they aren’t the solution, he argues.
Outside help
Yet a variety of NGOs have been responsible for supporting the cooperative
model.
“We are development-oriented, not relief-oriented,” said Amsalu Andarge, an
Addis Ababa-based field officer coordinator for the NGO
<
http://www.acdivoca.org/> Agriculture Cooperative Development Integrated
Volunteers Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA). In 1995, the
US-based organization helped launch
<
http://www.acdivoca.org/site/ID/ethiopiaace> Agricultural Cooperatives in
Ethiopia (ACE), which established regional-level cooperative bureaus.
“Those cooperatives established by ACE are now leading the economic
transformation of the country,” Andarge said.
In fact, some cooperatives receive help not only from foreign-based NGOs but
from foreign state aid agencies as well.
Since September 2003, the <
http://www.jica.go.jp/english/> Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has worked alongside the Oromia
Forest and Wildlife Enterprise (OFEW), a state-run forest protection
organization, and local coffee farmers, helping them produce sustainable
coffee for the Japanese market, said Fumiaki Saso, a JICA project
coordinator in Jimma, 200km southwest of Addis Ababa.
JICA offered technical support, such as organizing
<
http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/> Rainforest Alliance certification and
facilitating access to the international market, while OFWE controlled the
coffee exportation process. After administrative costs - including JICA’s -
were covered, 70 percent of remaining revenue went to farmers and 30 percent
was retained by OFWE.
In March 2012, full oversight of the project was successfully handed over to
OFWE.
Support and oversight needed
The cooperative business model contains both the key to economic success and
a raft of potential problems, said cooperative expert Gebre.
“They are self-contained: members are producers, sellers, buyers and
consumers, and the cooperative that is member-led and member-oriented will
remain efficient and effective,” generating profits for members and
contributing to self-sufficiency.
But if cooperatives start to focus on profits to the exclusion of their
members’ needs, they could be transformed into supply-and-demand driven
“oligarchies”, he said, describing organizations controlled by a select few
with no concern for improving members’ lives or investing in communities.
“As they get bigger, there may be problems,” allowed Kassu Kebede, a
programme manager for ACDI/VOCA.
But growth can’t be avoided; to compete, the cooperatives will need to
diversify and become business-oriented. And it can be handled successfully,
he reasoned, citing as an example India, which has cultivated large,
business-oriented cooperatives that compete internationally while still
serving farmers.
For now, cooperatives still need support from NGOs like ACDI/VOCA and the
government, he added, noting that the latter should also provide oversight
to ensure cooperatives balance business-oriented growth with the needs of
cooperative members.
jj/rz
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Received on Thu Nov 08 2012 - 17:58:15 EST
