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Farming Co-operatives in the Development of Zambian Agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

C. Stephen Lombard
Affiliation:
Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries, Papua, New Guinea, and formerly at theNatural Resources Development College, Lusaka

Extract

Most of the co-operative societies registered up to s 964, the year of Zambia's constitutional independence, were producer marketing organisations. By that date, 220 societies of all types were on the official register, claiming a total of 43,697 members and a paid-up share capital of K1.7 million.1

After independence the ruling United National Independence Party made it clear that the majority of Zambians should be involved more fully in economic and social development than they had been hitherto. Co-operative organisation was seen as a strategic way of bringing more Africans into industry, commerce, and non-subsistence farming; ten or more people could apply for registration as a society, and thus qualify for financial assistance from the Government. President Kaunda launched this ‘revitalised’ postindependence co-operative movement personally in January 1965, and called on the unemployed to put their various skills to work on planned agricultural and construction projects: ‘The money is there and the know-how…You an form these co-operative societies anywhere in Zambia and we shall assist you in getting on’.2 He specifically encouraged the formation of vegetable, egg, beef, milk, and road-making co-operatives.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

Page 294 note 1 For further details, see my monograph on The Growth of Co-operatives in Zambia, 1914–71 (Lusaka, 1971,), Zambian Papers No. 6.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 2 Text of President Kaunda's speech at Chifubu Rally, 17 January; Information Department, Lusaka. A detailed report was carried in the Northern News (Ndola), 18 01 1965.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 3 I.L.O., Report to the Government of Zambia on Co-operative Education and Training and Financing of Co-operatives (Geneva, 1966), p. 4.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 4 I.L.O., Report to the Government of Zambia on Co-operative Management and Administration (Geneva, 1967), p. 3.Google Scholar

Page 294 note 5 Zambia Daily Mail (Lusaka), 15 05 1975.Google Scholar

Page 296 note 1 Kaunda, Kenneth, A Path for the Future (Lusaka, 1971), p. 44.Google Scholar

Page 297 note 1 See my study of one Zambian communal society in Apthorpe, R. J. (ed.), Rural Cooperatives and Planned Change in Africa, Vol.4, Case Studies (U.N. Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, 1970).Google Scholar

Page 297 note 2 Kaunda, Kenneth, ‘Address at the Opening of a Seminar on Rural Development’, 03 1970;Google Scholar Zambia Information Service, Lusaka.

Page 298 note 1 These guidelines were set out by President Kaunda to the National Co-operative Conference, 22 Jaunary 1970; Information Department, Lusaka.

Page 298 note 2 Zambia Daily Mail, 22 May 1971, and Times of Zambia (Ndola), 24 05 1971.Google Scholar