The hillside cooperatives of the Mukaza commune in the municipality of Bujumbura mairie have posted poor returns for the past two years. This emerged from the exchanges of January 8, 2023 between the members of these cooperatives and the administrators of the Mukaza commune.
Alexis Havyarimana, president of the federation of hillside cooperatives in the town hall of Bujumbura: “poor governance is one of the causes of this situation”.
During these exchanges, some members of the hillside cooperatives warned that the financial state of their cooperatives is not good. Some have less than the 20 million FBu that the State granted them during the last two years. “There are even those who have already closed the doors”, deplore the members of these cooperatives. They indicate that the presidents of certain cooperatives robbed the treasury of the latter. For others, we owe them a lot of bad debts.
An individual who spoke with Burundi Eco does not beat around the bush by arguing that the majority of these cooperatives should work at a loss, because the members of the latter have not been prepared regarding the functioning of these cooperatives. Most of them thought it was the fees that the ruling party and the government gave to their members. They do not have been made aware of the merits of these cooperatives.
Alexis Havyarimana, president of the federation of hillside cooperatives in the town hall of Bujumbura regrets that most of these cooperatives are working at a loss.
What are the reasons for this failure?
Among the reasons for this situation is poor governance. “Some don’t know what it takes made to boost the finances of their cooperatives. The executive committee, the arbitration committee and the general assembly don’t work great. The president of the cooperative is considered a king. It is uncontrolled and does whatever it wants in most co-ops. The members remain speechless. They don’t know that they are the ones who appointed him and that they are able to replace him if necessary,” he worries.
Worse still, even the members of the executive committee sheepishly follow the president’s instructions. There are vice-presidents who do not know the financial state of the cooperatives they represent.
Moreover, there is no transparency in the management of cooperatives. Meetings are not often organized to inform members about the financial state of cooperatives. Some presidents even hesitate to appropriate almost all the treasure of the cooperatives. They manage them as if these last belonged to them.
According to him, another anomaly is that we confuse the administrators, the leaders of the cooperatives and those of the party in power. They did not manage to collaborate well for the smooth running of the cooperatives’ activities. Another challenge concerns the preparation of business plans. We recorded a bitter failure at the level of the business plans. As an example, he mentions a cooperative that pays 80 thousand FBu while it has a profit margin that does not exceed 3000 FBu per day.
And add a other cooperative located in Nyakabiga III which opted for the construction of a remunerative public toilet. However, this public latrine is not yet operational. In order to reverse the trend, Havyarimana indicates that we intend to organize capacity building on the development of business plans towards members of cooperatives.
Trial and error in the choice of projects, a major challenge
A ces défis, Rénovat Sindayihebura, administrator of Mukaza commune adds trial and error in the choice of projects to be carried out. We don’t plan. Moreover, most of these cooperatives have not implemented the projects they have proposed to those granting the financing. They hijacked the purpose of the funding.
However, Sindayihebura reminds the members of the hillside cooperatives that the money they received is to be reimbursed to the State.
Despite this situation, the evaluation made by Fonic on the first installment of the financing of 10 million FBu per cooperative shows that 62% of the cooperatives exceed the turnover of 10 million FBu, 30% a turnover of between 5 and 10 million FBu and 8% have less than 5 million FBu.
For Fonic, the development of these hillside groups is going crescendo. He then asks those who placed last not to be discouraged. “Their failure should serve them as success in the near future,” he says.
Note that it has already been twice that the government grants 2,911 hillside cooperatives funding of BIF 10 million each as part of supporting community development.
