With a history dating far back as we can remember, a lot of people have been involved in a cooperative directly or indirectly but what really is a cooperative?
According to fit small business cooperative is an organization owned and controlled by the people who use the products or services the business produces and it is democratically controlled.
Cooperative society was also found in the bible during the days of Pharaoh, Joseph set up a farmer cooperative to help the country Egypt through the days of farming


The dictionary meaning of cooperation is “to work together”. How­ever, the meaning of cooperative societies is quite technical and has the context of village cooperatives in India. In one form or the other, some kind of cooperative societies are found all over the world,
International Cooperative Alliance defines cooperatives as people-centered enterprises owned, controlled and run by and for their members to realize their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations.


As some might think cooperative society is not only for the poor or farmers alone everybody can actually benefit from a cooperative
The functions of the cooperative society cannot be fulfilled by individuals. The idea is that what individual cannot do because, of his limitations can be done by economic enterprise

Cooperative society plays a crucial role in promoting the process of development and togetherness and most especially in eradicating poverty. It also leads to an important direction of industrialization of the economy which aids developing countries.
Cooperative are setup to remedy certain issues in a specific market or market place, the purpose of a cooperative is always set out before its creation even specific goals that the members intend to achieve by joining the cooperative

One of the major purposes of a cooperative is to encourage its members to save money and enables them to access the finance they require for various purposes from their accumulated savings. This purpose provides an indication of what a cooperative is really created for which is to help the members to achieve certain goals, the 2 major tasks they performed by a cooperative are:

To enable members to save their money on a regular basis, or according to their needs. The member saves his/her money within the framework of the cooperative. Knowing that he/she will receive a suitable return for his effort, in the form of interest on his savings.
The second fundamental task of the cooperative is to grant loans to its members. Loans are granted from the members’ accumulated savings. Obviously, not all the members can take out loans, or obtain them immediately or simultaneously. Members are granted loans in accordance with their seniority within the cooperative and the amount of their savings. Generally speaking, the size of loans granted from the cooperative’s fund is governed by the liquidity regulations of the country in which it is located.

Through the cooperative, a lot of people who have not been able to access loans from the banks have been able to access loans from a cooperative society.

Cooperative societies have been granting peasant farmers and the financially excluded access to finance which has gone a long way in reducing poverty in several countries of the world
It is said that at least 12% of humanity is a cooperator of any of the 3 million cooperatives on earth. That is 12 percent getting access to finance and been taken out of poverty.

Cooperative societies have since evolved over the years to provide various services to its members. Even leveraging on technology like we are providing to ensure management and monitoring is very easy you read more about is at https://www.asusu.ng/

A lot of the population in Africa still do not have bank accounts but still rely on the cooperative for their savings.
In Uganda, only about 20% of people have bank accounts. But more than 65% of their population belongs to one cooperative or the other While some other African countries are having over 16milion belong cooperatives this goes to speak of a large number of still unbanked populations in Africa.
Most cooperatives run their day to activities manually making managing its members tedious and tiring, considering the importance of the cooperative society.
asusu is helping to digitize farmer cooperative in Nigeria enabling them to benefit from economies of scale to lower their costs of acquiring inputs or hiring services such as storage and transport providing them with the much need information to be able to make informed decisions.
Benefits of digitizing your cooperatives
Digitalization presents five major operational benefits for cooperatives:

• Ease of operation
• Reduced work-day
• Improved accuracy/fewer errors
• Increased revenues/collection
• Reduced cost of delivering services
• Improved documentation and reporting

Digitizing your cooperative will free up operators of the cooperatives and give them the opportunity to focus their efforts on important matters, such as marketing, and to improve productivity for members. They also offer user’s better prospects of securing bank loans and contracts from big aggregators since cooperatives using digital systems can easily show that they are reliable and profitable.

Asusu will help you transfer existing data from other electronic forms or paper-based formats. And also set up and test the system. Most importantly we will train you’re your cooperative staff on how to manage the system.
Many cooperatives continue to walk in darkness as to digitizing their process and continue to use paper-based data management systems for a number of reasons. These include a lack of awareness of existing digital solutions, incapacity to use technology, digital illiteracy, weak enabling environments, lack of capital, and social and cultural opposition to new technologies.
But the testimonials from cooperatives who have embraced this system will clearly let you know that this is the right decision for every cooperative to take.
Asusu also helps you grow your cooperation by helping you get more members to your cooperative and also help your members get access to loans.
Don’t wait any longer to get on the asusu platform for cooperation and allow the technology to do all the cumbersome work of managing a cooperative.