Comparative Study of the Factors affecting Sustainability of Agricultural Cooperatives in Rwanda, case study of Two Rice Farmers Cooperatives of the Southern Zone Tumukunde Ritha, Shukla Jaya, Mbabazi Peter Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kigali, Rwanda Online published on 5 December, 2015. Abstract This study is entitled “Comparative study of the factors affecting the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda”. The Government of Rwanda views cooperatives as a potential vehicle through which the cooperatives members could expand access to income-generating activities, develop their business potential, including entrepreneurial and managerial capacities through education and training; increase savings and investment, and improve social well-being with special emphasis on gender equality, housing, education, health care and community development. Agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda lead to a variety of achievements to its members, such as the supply of agricultural inputs, access to financial aid, market access among others. However, not all the formed cooperatives are fruitful to their members. Most of these cooperatives start well, members are willing to work hard for their development, they perform well in the beginning, but after a while, most of them become dormant, or even it becomes worse and they fail completely. The main objective of this research was to analyze factors affecting the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives. The present research was guided by the following specific objectives: to analyze rice production and factors of yield variation before and after joining cooperative, to examine the social factors of sustainability agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda, to identify economic factors of sustainability agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda and to identify institutional and governance factors affecting agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda. It was conducted on two farmers cooperatives located in the Southern province of Rwanda. Among those cooperatives, one is considered as a model cooperative and the other one a cooperative with poor performance. The target population from those two rice farmers' cooperatives was 350 from Ngiryi and Nsuri cooperatives, from which a sample size of 154rice farmers was derived from Ngiryi and Nsuri cooperatives. The sampling methods used are cross-sectional survey with 154 respondents selected by systematic sampling and cluster sampling. Another method adopted in this research is participatory approach. The multiple linear regression analysis was also used to assess the level of success of cooperatives from socio-economic and institutional factors. The key findings from the field survey revealed that, the average mean of rice production in Ngiryi cooperative was 2.94 tons before farmers being grouped into cooperatives, after joining cooperative, the yield shifted up to 4.96 tons. This showed that after rice farmers were grouped into cooperatives, the yield was increased by sixty eight percent (68.7%) of the total production before joining cooperatives. The same case of Nsuri cooperative, the average yield before cooperative was 1.55 tons while after intervention of cooperatives the yield was 3.271 tons of rice. For the considered social factors, due to the level of significance of 0.01 with the p-value of 0.0000, (p-value<0.01), the analysis showed that there is significance effect of social factors on the sustainability of Ngiryi cooperative, with p-value of 0.0000 (p-value<0.01), the same was observed for Nsuri cooperative the analysis showed that there is significance effect of social factors on Nsuri cooperative. For the considered economic factors, the results from the chi-square table showed that there is significant effect of economic factors on the sustainability of Ngiryi cooperative with p-value of 0.000 which is less than to level of significance of 0.01. The Pearson chi-square from this correlations was found to be 9.562 respectively. Whereas for Nsuri cooperative the results from the chi-square table showed that there is no significance effect of economic factors on the on Nsuri cooperative. This is explained by p-value of 0.066 which is greater than the level of significance of 0.01 (P-value =0.066>0.01) and their corresponding Pearson chi-square of 3.373 respectively. In terms of the considered institutional and governance factors (the understanding of cooperative principles and concepts by cooperative leaders, decision making by cooperative leaders, understanding of the tasks by leaders and involvement of cooperative members in decision making), the results from the chi-square test of Institutional and governance factors in the case of Ngiryi cooperative showed that there is significant effect of fore mentioned factors to the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives. Whereas on the side of Nsuri cooperative, Chi-Square Tests showed that there is no significant effect of institutional and governance factors on the functioning of Nsuri cooperative. By conclusion drawn from the comparative study of two rice farmers cooperatives, the Ngiryi cooperative has better management and better performance compared to Nsuri cooperative, these were arrived by comparing level of contribution or R-square values where Ngiryi perform at 57% mean while Nsuri cooperative has succeed at 44% respectively. Top Keywords Sustainability, Cooperatives, Socio-economic factors. Top |