Consultancy Services to conduct a diagnostic analysis of cooperative development in selected sectors and regions in Ethiopia

With its globally and historically recognized accomplishments in promoting cooperatives and the wider social and solidarity economy , the ECC considers the International Labour Organization (ILO) as an important capacity builder who can play a valuable role in realizing the modernization ambition. In an effort to support the government in realizing the full potential of cooperative enterprises, the ILO in close collaboration with ECC will carry out a diagnostic analysis to understand the nature of deficiency of cooperative development, to identify context-specific constraints, opportunities ways of addressing the constraints in selected sectors and regions.

The desired ECC-ILO partnership would look to modernize cooperatives so that they can respond to the country’s current economic and social needs while ascertaining the sustainable benefit of their members. The proposed partnership will start with a diagnostic assessment of sample cooperatives to identify the specific challenges faced by cooperatives.  While the ECC’s modernization manual has identified high level constraints faced by cooperatives, the diagnostic assessment will build on the analysis as a starting point and may confirm, detail or re-prioritize challenges to specific local realities.

Scope

The assessment will focus on specific sectors namely teff and wheat and sample set of cooperatives operating in these value chains that have been identified by the ECC. To make sure that the partnership maximizes the cooperative advantage in the target sectors, the assessment will also aim at identifying potential synergies between the three priority types of cooperatives in the given sector and region e.g. agricultural cooperatives delivering produce to consumer cooperatives while financial cooperatives providing financing to production and marketing activities of consumer and/or agricultural cooperatives. The focus on limited sectors (mainly teff and wheat to some extent) will allow deeper learnings and the design of specific interventions to build or strengthen a holistic value-chain that benefits all actors.