A bankable, compliant and sellable cooperative

What a financier or a buyer expects from a cooperative

The OHADA cooperative framework gives cooperatives a legal personality recognised throughout CEMAC. It also makes them the entry point for the certification and traceability programmes that export markets require. What partners expect holds in three words: governance, financial management, pooled and traced volumes. Professionalising governance and management is how you earn the trust of buyers and banks.

For whom

The common-initiative group that is the first tier of rural organisation and wants to become a cooperative; the cooperative financing its collection and its storage warehouses; the union or federation negotiating downstream contracts with processors or exporters; the producer organisation whose European buyers ask about the origin of each lot.

How we proceed

Before any study, the actor diagnosis goes and sees the organisation, on documents and on site: an honest picture of governance, staff, distribution of roles and means. The “Capacities” path then trains teams position by position and produces a versatility matrix that names the positions held by a single person, with certificates that financiers can rely on.

On the market, the cooperative structures the collective traceability of its members — georeferenced plots, imagery and registers meeting upstream traceability requirements — and secures downstream contracts. On financing, collection and warehouses are prepared like any project: verified market, costing in FCFA, file in the financier’s format.

Who pays for the assignment

A cooperative rarely has the cash for an engineering assignment, and it is not for its members to carry it on their dues. In most cases, the party that benefits from a structured cooperative pays: the buyer or exporter who needs regular, traced volumes, the support programme whose mandate it is, or the institution financing the season.

So introduce us to your buyer or your programme: we prepare the proposal with you and with them. An assignment does not start until a payer has been identified.

Before you write to us

Four points allow us to answer usefully: by-laws and a board in office, a list of members, volumes that can be verified, and an identified buyer or outlet. If one is missing, say so: that is often where the work begins.

We do not promise a loan. We make your file one that can be appraised; the bank or the microfinance institution decides.

What you receive

An organisational diagnosis, a legal structuring and governance plan, a training plan and a versatility matrix, a collective traceability scheme and, when collection must be financed, a bankable file. Your cooperative can also join the actors’ directory: it appears there as an identified counterpart for processors, exporters and input suppliers looking for pooled and traced volumes.

Free submission, first reply within forty-eight working hours, quote after the official opening of the file.

Go further