Nigeria.
GENEX Cooperative, a subsidiary of URUS Group, focuses on the import distribution and marketing of cattle genetics and the provision of cattle breeding technical services to farmers and technicians. This year, it started implementing its new 5-year USAID-funded Cooperative Development Program (CDP) activity in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, focusing on Strengthening Cooperatives to Support Climate-Smart Livestock Systems.
Through a rigorous and transparent selection process, the GENEX CDP identified 30 cooperative organizations in Kenya and Uganda that will be supported by the project to become profitable, professional, and climate-smart businesses over the project’s life—through September 2028.
Selected partner cooperatives are located predominantly in the Southwest regions of Kenya and Uganda, respectively, and mainly focus on collecting and marketing milk from their individual members to local processors and traders.
In GENEX’s efforts and best practices to provide capacity-strengthening packages that respond to the right individual needs of their partner cooperatives, the CDP team of cooperative experts conducted cooperative performance assessments at all 30 organizations using GENEX’s cooperative assessment tool.
A snapshot of what we learned from these cooperative assessments includes:
From the cooperative assessments, the following topics will be a priority in project activities:
Governance, leadership, and management
- Supporting Women and youth representation in cooperative activities and decision-making positions
- Training on leadership and governance for elected cooperative boards
- Develop strategic plans to develop and grow services provided by cooperatives
- Improved business management practices at the cooperative level to support data-driven decision-making.
- Increase access to digital technology and tools to support record-keeping and reporting
Business and value services provision to members
- Increase the value and total services provided to farmer members.
- Support climate-smart practices in the dairy industry and processing
- Provide training and resources related to dairy farm herd management, feeding, and breeding for enhanced farm productivity
- Increase access to financial services limited access to financial services
- In part, the Cooperative Spirit is used by members to increase retention and service utilization of the cooperative. Low-capacity utilization of cooperative infrastructure due to side selling, among other reasons
These aspects have informed the production of Cooperative Capacity Strengthening plans, co-created by partner cooperative leaderships and GENEX teams—these plans will be the guide and reference to what type of efforts need to be prioritized by the CDP project team and the cooperatives over the next five years.
