Abstract:
With most governments in Africa withdrawing from providing services to the agricultural
sector due to Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPS), and also the consequent
breakdown of the government supported cooperatives, farmers have been striving to
provide for themselves the services they obtained from the government with varying levels
of success. In Uganda, one way in which farmers have achieved this is through Area
Cooperative Enterprises (ACE). This paper is an assessment of factors influencing the
success of ACES affiliated to Uganda Cooperative Alliance (UCA). The study was carried
out in 2005. Pair-wise rankings of product, organizational, financial and logistical related
factors show that value addition, number of trainings attended, good product prices and
availability of transport were ranked highest in terms of contribution towards the group's
success in their respective categories. Regression analysis showed that group size and
amount of equity contributions were positively related to gross value of business volumes
while number of years that ACE has been in operation was negatively related to gross value
of business volumes.
