Factors Affecting the Performance of Pastoral Cooperatives in Northern Kenya: A Case Study of Livestock Based Cooperative Societies in Isiolo County, Kenya

Abstract

Pastoralist is people who thrive on keeping livestock in the arid and semi-arid areas in Kenya that constitute 89% of the land mass. The climate change effect has pushed pastoralist to settle and diversify their income base by engaging in livestock and livestock product for their livelihood support by the formation of cooperatives. There are lots of studies done on the deposit-taking cooperative with slight effort on the non-deposit cooperative society's performance. The research sought to establish factors affecting the performance of the pastoral cooperative movement in Northern Kenya. The study adopted the use of a questionnaire as the research instrument and descriptive research design. The questionnaire was pre-tested for validity and reliability. The data collected were edited and coded before analysis to check for consistency and completeness. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 16) and MS Excel (2013) was adopted for analysis. A total of 187 respondents were sampled with a response rate of 81 percent returned the questionnaires.

Based on the findings, the researcher found out that organizational systems and corporate governance are not well understood by the members, boards and clients. The study recommends for the triangulation with other non-deposit taking societies performance and review of the policies.

Keywords: Cooperative, livestock, livelihood, pastoralist