Community co-operatives a key economic driver
The development of community co-operatives will ultimately lead to fewer people relying on government grants, and a better awareness of local economics
RADICAL economic transformation through the development of community co-operatives can become one of the three main pillars of South Africa’s economy.
This is the vision of the Institute for Co-operatives and Community Economic Development (ICCED).
Established as a NGO in 2016, ICCED’s aim is to encourage the development of self-reliant communities, ultimately decreasing the number of people reliant on government grants.
ICCED has partnered with Kohwa Holdings, which provides communities with technical skills in the agricultural sector.
However, ICCED itself focuses on developing community economics to encourage communities to not only learn pertinent skills, but also to start businesses within their field of training, thus becoming incoming generating and self-reliant.
‘We constantly find that co-operatives are trained in isolation and do not know what goes into the economic development of their area,’ said ICCED Managing Director Dumisa Dlamini.
ICCED also encourages the working together of community co-operatives with ward councillors and traditional leadership.
This helps co-operatives better understand the role they play in meeting IDP (integrated development plan), LED (local economic development) and NDP (national development plan) targets.
‘The survival of co-operatives depends on local municipal involvement,’ said Dlamini.
With community economic freedom as the objective, ICCED aims to turn around the current 88% failure rate of co-operatives to an 88% success rate.
‘Local municipalities don’t have the revenue to generate an income and sustain themselves. If we equip community co-operatives with knowledge, communities will better understand municipal rates, why they must be paid and how they are used,’ said Dlamini.
‘Once this is achieved, we will no longer see service delivery protests as communities will have the knowledge that rates must be paid and the economic know-how to generate an income and sustain themselves to pay these rates.
In turn, local municipalities’ revenue bases will increase and service delivery will improve.’
ICCED’s ultimate goal is to influence government policy in favour of community economic development through co-operatives and for co-operatives to become the vehicle to support local municipalities in terms of community economic development and infrastructure projects.
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