The Role of Farmers’ Multipurpose Cooperative Societies in Promoting Business among Women, Albuko Woreda, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Cooperatives have played a valuable role in improving the socio economic status of its members in general and women members in particular. They have developed their financial and technical capacities by providing various resources and assistances. Mean while, most women especially those who were living in rural areas have a problem in beginning and developing their own business. The problems include credit, training, market information, skill development and others. The above mentioned problems have inhibited them to start and develop their own business. Given such limitations, the study was conducted to know the role of farmers’ multipurpose cooperative societies in promoting business among women in two farmers multipurpose cooperative societies namely, Segno Gebeya and Degaga farmers multipurpose cooperative societies to study the contributions provided by the societies, to explore the socio economic characteristics of respondents in relation with their perception on the contributions and to assess their perception on the contributions by taking a total of 99 sample respondents. The study employed descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation test and qualitative ways of analysis to achieve the objectives. The result shows that, the societies have provided technical assistance, loan, market information, business related training and they arranged discussion forum. They provided the above mentioned contribution at various intervals. According to Spearman’s correlation result, educational level and perception of the respondents on the contributions are positively correlated indicating that the higher the educational level, the better would have a positive perception on the contributions. Besides with this duration in business and the women members perceptions on the contributions are negatively correlated indicating that the higher duration in business results a negative perception on the contributions. Age is found to have no correlation with the perception of the respondents on the contributions. The major constraints observed in providing the contributions were; distance from home to cooperative office, incapability and lack of experiences of those engaged in the provision of the contributions, unable to provide the contributions continuously, engaging in household chores, unable to find a potential and good source of loan, infrastructural problems etc.

Keywords: Cooperative, Contributions, Promote Business