The Cooperative Facility for Africa - CoopAfrica - is a technical cooperation programme for the promotion of cooperative development in Africa. From the ILO Office in Dar-es-Salaam, CoopAfrica covers so far 9 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa with support of the ILO Cooperative Programme in Geneva. CoopAfrica aims at helping people to co-operate out of poverty as well as to deal with the cooperative needs such as they have been identified in CoopAfrica's preliminary research project, Research for a Cooperative Facility for Africa. Together with a wide range of international and national partners, CoopAfrica promotes an enabling legal and policy environment, effective cooperative unions and federations as well as demand-driven services for cooperatives.

What's new

• Message from ILO Director-General, Juan Somavia, on the occasion of the launch of International Year of Cooperatives
  "With the theme "Cooperative Enterprises Build a Better World", the United Nations globally launched the International Year of Cooperatives (IYC) on Monday 31 October 2011 in New York to promote the growth and creation of cooperatives worldwide. The Year is intended to raise public awareness of the invaluable contributions of cooperative enterprises to poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration. ILO will play a special role in the coordination and planning of the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives 2012, highlighting the strengths of the cooperative business model as an alternative means of doing business and furthering socioeconomic development. A wide range of activities and events are planned in addition to making available policy briefs, training materials, guidelines and information materials for the ILO's constituents and other cooperative stakeholders."
• 15 November 2011, Co-operative Women’s Challenge in Kenya - Strategies for encouraging women’s participation on co-operative boards (pdf file 329kb)
  A participatory workshop will be organized at the Cooperative College of Kenya to discuss strategies for encouraging women’s participation on co-operative boards. The workshop, organized with the support of the UK Cooperative College (UKCC) and COOPAfrica, will provide a forum for existing women leaders as well as male and female staff who are responsible for education and board development training across a range of co-operatives to exchange views and work towards strategies for promoting women's cooperative leadership.
• 24-28 October , 2011: Social and Solidarity Economy: Our common road towards Decent Work” - Reader for the ILO Academy on Social And Solidarity Academy (pdf file 1.93MB)
  Social and Solidarity Economy: Our common road towards Decent Work" - The second Social and Solidarity Economy Academy was organized in Montreal, Canada by the International Training Centre of the ILO. The Academy gathered together practitioners and policy-makers from around the world, to share their experiences and meet leading Social and Solidarity Economy specialists. The objectives were among others to generate a better understanding of the concept of a Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE), to strengthen the impact of a Social and Solidarity Economy through the creation of a community of practice on the subject and to make use of tools and approaches to effectively promote SSE initiatives and take actions within the context of such initiatives. A Reader was produced in support of the Second SSE (available in English, French and Spanish). The Reader brings together a series of articles to help build a common understanding of the concept of SSE, with specific focus on issues regarding governance and organizational management, policy and networking in and for the organizations of the SEE. It also includes general information about the ILO and the social and solidarity economy initiative and articles on the relationship between SSE and the Informal Economy, Green Economy, Local Development and modalities of financing the SSE.
• Month of women entrepreneurs financial fair at Mnazi Mmoja grounds
  MOWE aims to inspire women entreprenuers use their idea and energy to turn chanllenges into opportunities. The Financial Fair is forum for interaction between women entrepreneurs and financial institutions. The fair is an opportunity for financial institutions to share information about what financial products exist and who is providing them.
  
• Mobile Learning Toolkit for trainers of Managers of Agricultural Cooperatives
  The Mobile Learning Toolkit for trainers of Managers of Agricultural Cooperatives by Jennifer Parker in collaboration with the ILO International Training centre and ILO/COOPAfrica, is the result of research into mobile phone use and user needs within the African context, however it has been developed for use in all developing contexts. It is intended as a “trainer’s toolkit” that can help deliver a wide range of training activities both inside and outside of the classroom.
• CoopAfrica Final self-evaluation report
  The final self-evaluation covers the period from October 2007 until December 2010 and complements other evaluation and impact assessment exercises of COOPAFRICA . The focus of the self-evaluation is on programme's core activities during this period, i.e. those financed by DFID. This documents summarizes the main findings and highlights recommendations and lessons learned.