Improving Institutional Capacity:

Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries

Society (ESC) came into force as applicable to all member states in 2006, establishing a new

type of cross-border cooperative.

Does the government have a body with the specific mandate to work with farmer

organizations?

The creation of a specific, funded department or body with the mandate to interact with and

strengthen farmer organizations – or co-operatives in general, as is sometimes the case – is an

important sign of a favourable policy environment, as it represents a tangible commitment

from the government and provides a vehicle for service delivery and policy discussions with

FOs. While it certainly does not guarantee successful service delivery (as the case studies will

show, the field-level execution and implementation quality of these agencies is often a

concern), it is another important precursor to success. Thus, the researchers attempted to

determine from public documents whether such bodies exist, under the Ministry of Agriculture

or elsewhere.

In general, the research has revealed that

73% of countries (

38 of 52) have an identifiable

body with such a mandate. A further 11

(21%)

do not, and the answer could not be

determined in 3, due to lack of available information on government structures. Regional

breakdowns are shown below:

Table 1: Existence of government bodies with a mandate to strengthen FOs

Group

Yes, identified body

Unclear

African Group

76%

12%

Arab Group

68%

27%

Asian Group

77%

23%

Total

73%

21%

Note that while Arab Group countries were found to have the fewest bodies dedicated to the

promotion of and interaction with co-operatives or farmer organizations, 3 out of the 6

countries without such bodies (Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates) are high-income

countries with less than 10% of the workforce engaged in agriculture, suggesting that the

governments may have chosen to allocate resources towards other areas affecting a larger

share of the population.

While comparative data is unavailable on a broad scale for the rest of the world, some studies

have found that dedicated departments for cooperatives are fairly common worldwide, so the

OIC is probably positioned similarly to other regions. For example, a recent report by ILO,

analyzing trends across nine countries (all but one outside the OIC) in Africa found that in all

nine countries, a ministry is held responsible for the legal monitoring of cooperatives

. Within

the ministry there is an established institutional window (usually a department) for

cooperatives.

Ibid.

These statistics are calculated based on the sample of countries covered by the research (51 out of 57 OIC countries). Full

categorization by country, and the sources used to determine the answer, are given in “Question 1” in the table in Annex 1.1

Ethiopia; Kenya; Tanzania; Rwanda; Zambia; Lesotho; Swaziland; Uganda