(NAIVASHA, KENYA) – Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOs) in Kenya have been urged to develop and share technologies to reduce the cost of investing in financial systems individually and to improve access to cybersecurity expertise, software development and digital products.
Cooperative Alliance of Kenya (CAK) Chief Executive Officer Daniel Marube said cooperatives should establish protocols for developing and sharing such technologies.
He advised cooperatives and SACCOs to embrace technology, strengthen governance and professionalise their operations to remain competitive and meet the changing financial needs of Kenya’s increasingly youthful population.
Marube said cooperatives could no longer rely on traditional business models, noting that technology was critical in improving service delivery, expanding financial inclusion and developing products tailored to suit diverse categories of members.
He said the cooperative movement needed to adopt appropriate technologies that would enable members, particularly young people, to access financial services efficiently.
He was speaking during a three day cooperative leader meeting in Naivasha, organised by CAK in collaboration with the Institute of Directors Kenya, under the theme “Leading future ready cooperatives and SACCOS governance, digital transformation, and sustainability in a disruptive world.”
“We are no longer the old cooperatives people knew. We are enablers of financial inclusion in this country,” he said.
The meeting brought together cooperative leaders and senior executives to discuss governance, technology, investment and human resource development in the movement.
Marube said shared technology platforms could enable cooperatives to develop products suited to specific groups, including farmers and young people.
“For example, with coffee farmers we can develop products to suit the cycle of production so that their loans can be repaid when the product is produced,” he said.
The CAK chief executive also urged cooperative leaders to exercise caution when investing members’ savings, warning them against ventures promising unusually high returns.
He said cooperatives held a major responsibility as aggregators of members’ savings and should therefore rely on evidence and sound investment principles before committing funds.
“Whenever our cooperatives are being enticed to investments that are giving very high interest rates, we need to dig further to find out where this interest is going to come from,” Marube said.
He cautioned cooperatives against putting members’ funds into pyramid schemes and other high risk ventures, saying leaders must prioritise safe and secure investment instruments.
Marube also called for greater professionalisation of the cooperative sector, urging SACCOs to recruit staff based on qualifications, skills and competence rather than personal relationships.
He said nepotism in recruitment could undermine the performance of cooperatives at a time when they were increasingly operating as major financial service providers.
“Our members require efficient, transparent, accountable, and quick services from people who have learned, who understand technology, and who understand our business model,” he said.
CAK National Vice Chairman Silas Magut said continuous training was critical to equipping cooperative leaders and staff with skills needed to manage modern SACCOs.
He said CAK had made continuous capacity building a key priority and planned to hold additional training sessions before the end of the year.
“Cooperative Alliance of Kenya has trained quite a number of our movement leadership so that in their own SACCOS they continue doing the kind of work that is required for a modern day SACCO movement,” said Magut.
New Forties Sacco board member Ann Ngunjiri, from Nyeri, said the training had strengthened her understanding of the importance of safeguarding members’ data and savings.
Ngunjiri encouraged Kenyans who had not joined SACCOs to consider doing so, saying cooperatives offered an important avenue for savings and investment.
She said women had increasingly embraced saving, with many building substantial financial resources through cooperative societies.
“Most of the Kenyan women are strong savers, and not just saving but saving in large numbers. They are commanding a huge amount of capital,” she said.
Ngunjiri, however, said cooperative members also needed to keep pace with technological changes, noting that the sector had to continuously adapt as the world became increasingly digital.
The leaders said the future of the cooperative movement would depend on its ability to combine strong governance, skilled personnel, prudent investment and technology driven services to attract and retain a new generation of members.