The illusion of the cooperative

Development practitioners love quantifiable entities. We are told that when it comes to administering aid, it is not the individual who matters but rather individuals. Development people want to show that their loans and grants are being dispensed to bunches of people, and often ask that these individuals, whether they are farmers, fishermen or miners, show some drive and commitment to working together, and form groups or cooperatives.

But why do the tens of millions of dollars in aid dispensed for supporting so-called rural cooperatives fail to have a major impact? After all, these are people who are supposedly working together and committed to achieving the same set of goals. Otherwise, they would not have formed a cooperative or association. The reality is that the cooperative is a façade: individual traders, merchants and subsistence producers have not worked, and do not want to work, together. The establishment of, say, the Accra North Farmers Cooperative is not going to change these peoples’ attitudes toward one another.

Let me shed some light on how things usually pan out with these ‘cooperative forming’ exercises by sharing some recent experiences from northern Ghana – specifically, those of the Talensi-Nabdam Small-Scale Miners Association. This is a rag-tag bunch of concession holders who were asked by the government to come together and form an association. This, it was explained, was the only way that they were going to get the equipment they desperately need in order to work: by coming together and sharing. The ‘equipment loan’ was in the range of 2.2 billion cedis, and included generators, pumps, compressors, wires and fuel. Of course, the requirement was that these guys again, come together and commit to sharing the equipment, something which would lead to increased yields and profits for all involved. The ‘association’ decided to appoint a treasurer, secretary and chairman, who on their own coin, travelled several times to Accra in late-2006 to present various aspects of their project proposal, detailing the equipment needs of the miners of Talensi-Nabdam, to receptive government staff. The equipment arrived for delivery and setup in late-2007.

Then, the problems started. It was agreed, beforehand, that the three generators be stationed centrally, to enable all of the concession holders to access its power. But that changed at the time of delivery: one concession owner decided to drop the biggest generator on his own concession. Another concession owner has complained repeatedly that the secretary of the association has ‘chopped the money’ earmarked for fuel. ‘He took all of the money,’ he told me. ‘That is 200 million cedis. Don’t mind him.’ There have been numerous complaints about the pumps, and the unequal sharing of compressors. People have also refused to share dynamite and the small amounts of fuel that remain. At a meeting organized for all of the concession owners last Thursday, the aim of which was to discuss how to move forward, I broke up three fights. One guy, in the midst of arguing, even took off his shirt, for reasons unexplained.

This is why so many cooperatives fail. We are told that the cooperative leads to bigger and better things: more sales, greater reputation, improved access to credit; and increased market access. But names and signatures do not necessarily equate to people wanting to work together. The reality is that people are lured into participating in the exercise because of the potential rewards: money, improved reputation, and in the case of Talensi-Nabdam, access to equipment.

But at no point does one think of one’s brother. Because if they did, they would be functioning smoothly, working together, and would not need the support in the first place.