Rural Cooperatives in the Cooperative Movement in Tanzania

A study by Francis Fanuel Lyimo based on seven years of teaching a course on Rural Cooperation at the University of Dar es Salaam. The book covers the entire field of rural cooperation in Tanzania, providing a foundation on which wider study can be based and addressing strategies and challenges of cooperation. By June 2008 Tanzania had over 2,600 agricultural marketing cooperative societies, nearly 4,800 savings and credits cooperative societies, and smaller numbers of livestock, fishing, housing, mining, industrial, water irrigation, transport, consumer, and service cooperatives, illustrating the movement’s scope. The topics covered make the book appropriate for use in Sociology, Rural Development, Marketing, Development Studies, and other social sciences. Lyimo surveys the international iterations of the cooperative movement and the history of cooperatives in Tanzania, highlighting how cooperative enterprises that put people rather than capital at the centre of their business can improve members’ economic power in bargaining for better marketing conditions and prices.