Founded by poor women during the worst years of Mozambique's civil war, the General Union of Cooperatives of Maputo (UGC) is today one of the capital's premier agricultural businesses, supplying much of its fruit, vegetables and chickens. The cooperative union's example shows that "there is no development of a community, of a country, without the contribution of the women themselves," UGC President Celina Cossa told Africa Recovery.
Approximately 85 per cent of the UGC's 6,000 members are women. Their
average income is some 50 per cent higher than the national minimum wage.
"If we take into consideration that the majority of our members are
illiterate, middle-aged women, and therefore very rarely recruited for any
job," notes Ms. Cossa, "we can evaluate the important role played
by our cooperatives in the economic and social life of the most vulnerable
people, and women in particular."
Photo: The Hunger Project / Elissa Davidson
Although the UGC is based primarily in Maputo's suburban "green belt," its prestige around the country has been so great that Ms. Cossa was chosen to head the National Farmers Union (UNAC) when it was launched in 1993. The experience, training and level of organization of the UGC members make their association a leading component of the national union.
Through production, a woman "recognizes her role in the transformation of society. She is no more a passive component but a participatory component of the community," Ms. Cossa emphasized at an early October 1998 ceremony in New York, during which she was awarded the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger by the Hunger Project, a New York-based non-governmental organization.
When the UGC was first launched in 1980, many of its founding members were widows or had been left behind by husbands working in South Africa as migrant labourers. Over time, the cooperatives belonging to the UGC became the capital's foremost suppliers of agricultural produce.
In the late 1980s, as the government shifted to a policy of economic liberalization, the UGC reorganized, placing greater emphasis on financial autonomy. It transformed itself from a collective production cooperative into a service cooperative, with individual members working on their own plots, supported by the UGC's training, credit and other facilities.
Raising poultry emerged as a new -- and very lucrative -- focus. With financing from its own resources, the World Bank and other sources, the UGC invested in hatcheries, feedmills, poultry farms, abattoirs and even a small veterinary laboratory to guard against poultry diseases. UGC members now have the capacity to produce 300,000 birds per month, selling both chickens (live and slaughtered) and eggs.
In addition, UGC cooperatives engage in handicrafts, carpentry and, to a small extent, cattle breeding. Services offered to its members include childcare as well as technical and management training, literacy classes, and general education. Women's education is particularly vital for the country, notes Ms. Cossa, since it helps "train them as leaders of their communities."
Securing access to credit and land -- two of the UGC members' most important resources -- has not been easy. UGC members generally are unable to secure bank loans directly, since they lack the collateral required by the banks. But the UGC's Savings and Credit Department, through a combination of outside financing and the mobilization of members' own savings, has been able to meet most of their financial needs. Over the period 1994-96, it charged UGC members an average interest rate of 20 per cent, compared with the 46 per cent rate charged by banks in 1996.
Most credit is in the form of inputs, however, used mainly for poultry-raising activities. At the end of the six-week production cycle, when the women have sold their chickens, "they come to us, we add up all the inputs, we are paid back for the inputs, and then the profits go back to those who generate them," Ms. Cossa explains.
The UGC also has made progress in guaranteeing its members' access to land. In the early 1990s, as Mozambique moved toward a market economy, the previous system of state ownership and informal land occupation was challenged by those seeking to secure individual land titles. Since many UGC members worked land that had been abandoned by Portuguese settlers at the time of Mozambique's independence in 1975, and therefore lacked clear titles to their plots, this process of "legalization" was seen as a threat. "When we saw there were risks we might lose the land," notes Ms. Cossa, "we took our measures in time." The union helped its members acquire land surveys and other documentation needed to secure titles.
Through UNAC, the UGC also influenced the new land tenure law adopted by parliament in July 1997. The law retains formal state ownership of land, but individuals may secure use and occupancy rights. And although it makes reference to "customary" land practices (which discriminated against women's access to land), the law specifically asserts that such practices cannot violate constitutional guarantees of gender equality. It stresses women's equality with men in acquiring land titles and also insists that land must be inherited "independent of sex."
The government, asserts Ms. Cossa, "is respecting grassroots decisions over the ownership of land." One reflection of this, she notes, is that it brought the UGC onto the committee overseeing the land act's implementation.
Through such broader influence and its own successful production activities,
the UGC has shown that Mozambican women can do far more than cook, sew and
bear children, Ms. Cossa concludes.
