Discussion on the contribution of cooperatives to poverty reduction in Africa has quite often been based on their potential role rather than the actual impact, partly due to the dearth of empirical studies since the early 1990s. This paper provides evidence on the contribution of cooperatives to...

Based on long-term ethnographic research, this article analyses the relations between local politics and farmers' participation in rural development in Tigray (Ethiopia). It takes an actor-oriented approach and focuses on local government officials and farmer representatives, who mediate between...

Cooperative development in Africa can be said to have traversed two main eras: the era of state control and that of liberalization. The first era lasted up to the early 1990s and saw the origin and substantial growth of cooperatives on the continent. During that period, different models of...

The cooperative sector in Belgium has always been very much linked to other social movements. In the 1990s the backbone of the sector, namely the cooperative banks, have undergone major transformations. In this article, the two most important cooperative financial holdings that were created to...

This paper aims to fill the academic gaps in the study of the new co-operative movement in China and its innovative mechanisms, and to get a more comprehensive idea of new co-operatives operating as home-grown Chinese social enterprises, by exploring the dynamic process of co-operative practice...

As a particularly heterogeneous social System, Belgian NGO's have recently been involved in a self appraisal process. Given the multiple internal and external challenges facing them, this process is considered as indispensable to the reaffirming of their legitimacy and even their survival. Among...

Purpose – This paper aims to fill the academic gaps in the study of the new co‐operative movement in China and its innovative mechanisms, and to assess why new co‐operatives deviate from the orthodox co‐operative model represented by the standards of the International Cooperative...