Cooperatives as producer associations play a fundamental role in ending poverty and improving food security and nutrition. Food security, nutrition, and agriculture are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, with SDGs 1 and 2 being the leading goals that focus on the eradication of poverty and hunger. This ambitious Agenda is based on a holistic vision for sustainable development and emphasizes transformative change that ensures no one is left behind. All the goals are interlinked, interdependent, and based on sustainability in its three dimensions – economic, social, and environmental. The new vision of the SDGs recognizes the importance of multistakeholder approaches to eradicating poverty and hunger and achieving sustainable development.
Cooperatives are acknowledged as key actors in implementing the Agenda. It is important that they integrate into the multi-stakeholder processes being formed for implementation of the Goals, linking up in effective partnerships with a range of actors including governments, the United Nations system, civil society, and the private sector.
Cooperatives as producer associations play a fundamental role in ending poverty and improving food security and nutrition. The majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas, particularly in developing countries, and depend on agriculture as their main source of employment. Smallholder farmers and small-scale food producers, however, face numerous constraints that hamper their development. They are often fragmented, dispersed in remote areas, and face high transaction costs. They lack access to information and knowledge, infrastructure, markets, and financial resources.
Cooperatives and producer organizations, however, need to be supported in order to fully play their role in ending poverty and improving food security. There is a need to build their capacities so that they can drive rural institutional changes within their own associations and support innovation by their members. COOP Agency, as Public-Private-Partnership Agency has undertaken the responsibility of providing Cooperatives with technical and legal assistance by drafting their own by-laws and notarizing their agreements. Most Cooperatives function in rural areas, they do not have the certificate of business registration, certificate of enterprise registration, and investment registration certificate.
In accordance with Government Decree No 117, issued by the President of Somalia on 01/10/1974 after the adoption of the first Somali Cooperative Law in 1973 - the Ministry of Commerce supervises the Somali Cooperative Enterprises in the country, therefore the Ministry mandated COOP Agency on 12/07/2016 to organize and develop their business and co-investment initiatives. COOP Agency has already registered more than 820 (eight hundred twenty Cooperative Businesses that are ready to face both domestic and foreign demands and to take part in the International or the National Agenda to tackle the “Food Insecurity” existing in the country.
In the private sector, Cooperatives are the key stakeholders in both urban and economic development, being a major contributor to the national agenda of food insufficiency They provide around 90% of employment in the country’s far regions and towns (including formal and informal jobs), delivers crucial goods and services and contributes to tax revenues. In Somalia, it is increasingly being encouraged to help leverage the opportunities in the country's rural agricultural area and mitigate the challenges of rapid urbanization and influx of IDPs.