Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries
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largest producer of palm oil in Africa. This project relies on FOs as key channels for
production, commercialization, and organization.
 In Guinea, the government launched a study aiming to evaluate the methods used to
provide extension services to farmers, which found that engagement of FOs as key
partners was important. Separately, the government took a participatory approach that
heavily involved FOs in the drafting of its National Strategy for Agricultural Development -
Vision 2015. FOs were represented in national debates around the strategy and were
responsible for holding local meetings and sessions with farmers all over Guinea.
 The government of Guinea-Bissau in December 2002 passed a new National Policy on Co-
operative Development Policy based on the principles of ILO Recommendation 193
(described in Section 4.3.2). Guinea-Bissau became the first country in the world to
translate Recommendation 193 into law.
 Senegal recently reformed its framework law regulating the establishment and
governance of FOs. These reforms emphasize the autonomy and independence of FOs as
well as the centrality of agricultural extension and training to the role/mandate of FOs, and
require FOs to be more open and accessible. In addition, the National Extension Services
Agency was created to provide a system for public-private partnerships that can engage
FOs in the delivery of agricultural extension.
What is the current strength of the farmer organization movement in the country?
This study also sought to determine the strengths of the farmer organization movement by
looking for available data on the share of farmers that belong to farmer organizations. As
expected, given that there is no central body that collects such data, up-to-date figures were
hard to come by across the OIC. This, in fact, suggests a potential role for COMCEC or other
international bodies, as the Policy Recommendations section will discuss further.
However, an in-depth review of available sources generated direct estimates of the share of
farmers in FOs in 10 OIC member countries; further, the study yielded estimates of total
membership in 9 others. By comparing this to the estimated agricultural labor force (from
World Bank data), the study arrived at estimate shares of farmers belonging to FOs in 19
countries, or one-third of OIC membership (and 40% of the countries in the data collection
sample). These data points were available in all three regions of the OIC, although availability
was marginally higher in the Arab region (41% of countries). The mean share of farmers in FOs
was found to be 30%, with a median of 29%. Full details are shown in the following figure: