AfricaPress-Tanzania: A NON-GOVERNMENTAL organisation, the Legal Services Facility (LSF) in partnership with the Tanzania Agricultural Bank (TADB) have started offering training to cotton cooperative societies and AMCOS to equip them with skills on how to address challenges in daily operations.
The training comes after conducting a survey on the management of six cooperative societies in the Lake Zone, which revealed that there are some challenges which affect the daily running and management of the societies, which includes good governance and financial management.
LSF and TADB have come together to train cooperative societies on challenging areas for the benefit of farmers. The six cooperative societies which will benefit from the training are NYANZA, KAKU, MANAWA, KACU and Mbogwe.
Over 152,000 farmers will be reached under this partnership, including 679 AMCOS. The TADB Managing Director, Japheth Justine said most of the cooperative societies are managed poorly to the extent that they cannot get loans from financial institutions for them to expand.
“Our concentration will be on good governance, financial institution, human resources management and rules and regulations which govern cooperative societies in the country,” he said.
The Managing Director added, “We are happy for the development made so far. As we approach the start of cotton season, we have decided to start training cooperative societies and AMCOS for the benefit of farmers. We know there are some areas which AMCOS and the cooperative societies are doing. We believe that after the training, they will be able to run profitably and have good skills on financial management,” he said.
Legal Services Facility (LSF) Education Manager, Bryson Munuo said training institutions running independently and profitably is one of LSF duties.
“This is because we have over 200 institutions funded by LSF to run our projects with some organisations in need of training and capacity building,” he said.
It is from this backdrop that TADB extended training to cotton farmer’s cooperative societies and AMCOS, believing that the training will create a change, especially on areas of good governance and financial management.
This is a good opportunity for LSF to invest on agricultural sector which is one of the main economic sectors of the country.
“Immediately after the training, we will start another programme for farmers to know their rights and benefits which they can get from their cooperative societies,” he said.
It will also include policies and legal affairs, which will make the farmers benefit from different areas.
