Publications
Over the past 3 years COPAC has increasingly developed a research and conference based advocacy focus. The publications from these programme based activities can be sourced on this website and can be used for research, policy development and movement building.
Featured publications
This research report focuses on twenty case studies of successful cooperatives on the African continent. It also includes case studies on two successful cooperative colleges on the continent.
COPAC is putting this discussion document into the public arena to stimulate a debate about how to rebuild the cooperative movement in post-apartheid South Africa. After two failed attempts, through top down interventions, the document argues for the rebuilding of the cooperative movement from below as a movement -of -movements.
New publications
This study provides an overview of the current dynamics within the Ethiopian cooperative movement. It is a resource for researchers, cooperators and activists on the African continent who are trying to come terms with the challenges of movement building.
This discussion paper provides an overview of the current state of the South African Cooperative Sector. This includes a focus on the statistical profile of coops, the role of government policy and the state of the cooperative movement.
Over the past ten years cooperative development and movement building has happened under a cloud of policy uncertainty. Beyond the rhetoric of cooperative support, cooperatives emerging in poor communities have failed in many places due to the absence of state responsiveness or inappropriate state support and the lack of leadership from within the cooperative movement.
While the first consumer co-operative experiment in Rochedale in 1844, inspired by the ideas of Robert Owen, is widely documented, it would seem the sociological study of cooperatives began in earnest from the 1960s onwards.
This study focuses on the Co-operative Banking model and the Grameen Bank model. It attempts to highlight their histories, institutional arrangements, the design of their saving and loan delivery systems and most importantly their strengths and weaknesses. Emerging out of this are a set of five general policy recommendations.