Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries
29
Cooperatives in Egypt have also benefitted from Salasel, a joint programme between the ILO,
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Industrial Development
Organization (UNIDO), UNWomen and the Egyptian government. Salasel is a programme
aimed to encourage and support the growth of inclusive markets based on viable equitable
partnerships between small farmers and private sector investors in Upper Egypt. These two
programs, in conjunction with the constitutional commitment to FO independence, aim to
address the following challenges and capacity gaps that FOs face:
Table 4: Major Egyptian policy interventions and their link to FO capacity challenges 39
Capacity
Gap/Challenges
Intervention Intervening Body
Institutional: State
dependence and
Political Interference
Constitution of 2014 Egyptian Parliament
Technical:
Production (Input
Supply)
Salasel, which aims to support
partnerships between FOs and
investors
ILO, UNDP, UNIDO,
UNWomen and the Egyptian
Government
Institutional:
Representation /
governance
Constitution of 2014, which states that
80% of co-op leadership should
consist of smallholder farmers
Egyptian Parliament
Technical: Marketing Salasel, and the New Marketing
Strategy for Wheat
Ministry of Agriculture and
Reclamation, PBDAC, farmer
organisations, UNIDO, UNDP,
UNWomen and ILO
Technical:
Production (access
to finance)
New Marketing Strategy for Wheat Ministry of Agriculture and
Reclamation, PBDAC, farmer
organisations
Mozambique
Since Mozambique’s independence in 1975, the small-scale agricultural sector has been
seen as the backbone of the country’s economy. In the 1970s, cooperatives, state farms
and communal villages were at the centre of efforts to modernize the Mozambican
economy but for agriculture, this meant comparatively more investment in a highly
intensive and mechanized sector relative to the small-scale farming sector. The 1980s and
1990s saw disruptions to transport networks and agro-processing structures, as well as
movements of the rural population around the country.
Therefore, in many ways, the introduction of the Strategic Plan for the Development of
the Agricultural Sector in 2010 was an attempt to articulate an agricultural policy that
would benefit smallholder farmers. The guiding principles of the strategy is to (i) follow a
value chain perspective with an agribusiness model and (ii) establish public-private
partnerships to reduce costs and improve efficiency across value chains. The strategy also
39 This table summarizes and draws on the same sources cited in the preceding paragraphs