Until five years ago, Joseph Mwaura was just another downtrodden middle-aged Kenyan eking out a living washing cars at a petrol station on a busy highway in Nairobi. He hated the meagre $10 daily income, but with a family of four to feed he had no choice but to stick to his bottom rung of the ladder – or so he thought.
Today, Joseph runs several taxi-service cars, employs six people and lives in his own house, besides comfortably meeting his children’s education needs.
The secret to his transformation? Joseph joined a local saving and credit co-operative. Through it, he put aside $4 a day until he had saved enough to be able to borrow three times his savings, enabling him to buy a piece of land and venture into the transport business.
The co-operative movement in Kenya has helped millions of people like Joseph, transforming ordinary citizens into home and small-business owners through cheap, affordable credit.
Since 1908, when the British colonial government introduced the concept here, the movement has grown to become the most successful in Africa. It is the seventh-largest – and the fastest-growing – in the world.
According to the International Labour Organization, Kenya’s co-operative movement now accounts for 45 per cent of the country’s GDP, directly employing half a million people and indirectly employing two million more.
With a population of 45 million, Kenya has close to 20,000 registered, government-regulated co-operative societies, with membership standing at over 14 million, according to the International Co-operative Alliance and the Ministry of Industrialization and Co-operatives.
Kenyans own the Co-operative Bank of Kenya, which is the third-largest bank in the country (and the largest co-operative bank in Africa) as well as the Co-operative University of Kenya, a fully fledged public university devoted to the co-operative sector.
With an asset base estimated at $500 million, and with $400 million in savings, Kenya’s co-operatives are helping millions out of extreme poverty in what has been described as a ‘magic wand to pull people out of inequality’.
