Motorbike purchase started bearing fruit!
26-02-2024Written by Dawit Hailegiorgis, Cooperative advisor Ethiopia
Keberta Tigle Frie Women Multipurpose Primary Cooperative is a women-led cooperative well known for widely producing coffee, honey and spices. Moreover, the cooperative engages in input supply and providing prefinancing services to its members.
Agriterra has been supporting the cooperative by focusing on the first two commodities i.e., coffee and honey production and marketing. The cooperative sells its coffee, honey and spices to Bench Maji Forest Coffee Cooperative Union, processors, exporters, traders and other potential local buyers. The Keberta primary cooperative was established in 2014, and currently, the cooperative has a total of 3 permanent staff and 555 members.
Achievements
During the scoping assignment and cooperative assessment, the cooperative challenges were identified and some of the bottlenecks were low membership mobilisation, lack of finance or capital, absence of a vehicle to closely support farmer members and low credit facilities to members.
In addition, the location of the cooperative beekeeper members was remote and couldn’t be reached using a four-wheel drive vehicle. Agriterra has realised that to monitor, supervise, and increase the honey and coffee production on a daily/weekly basis, it will require the primary cooperative to have a motorbike. The goal is primarily membership mobilisation and to support agronomy related activities to boost coffee and honey production and sourcing from members.
Agriterra supported the cooperative in delivering internal capital (IC), mobilisation training to address the financial shortage of the cooperative and realise its BHAG’s, which are membership mobilisation, enhanced production and marketing of coffee and honey, and the purchase of a motorbike and car to provide extension services and transport members commodities to access a better market.
In addition to capacity building such as IC and awareness creation, Agriterra financially supported the procurement of a motorbike to help the cooperative realise the purchase of a car to increase the production, processing, and marketing of coffee, honey and spices. Agriterra contributed 75% of the total expense of the motorbike, which was purchased for 2.446 Euro and the remaining 25% was covered by the cooperative through IC mobilisation.
Harvesting honey
Currently, the cooperative has 96 beehives, of which 86 contain bee colonies. The manager of the cooperative is a beekeeper, and he uses the cooperative’s motorbike to support, coach and advise individual members in remote areas. The cooperative expects to harvest honey twice a year and the first round is expected to be delivered by April 2024. By the end of this year alone, the cooperative is anticipating 300,000 birr in revenue from honey sales.
Results
As a result of the purchase of motorbikes
- Membership mobilisation increased more than a fold (from 241 to 555)
- Number of honey beehives increase by more than nine folds (from 10 to 96)
- Cooperative capital increased as members started paying for shares pledged
- Members commitment increased
- Additional members are showing willingness to join the cooperative
