Cooperative Resilience and Equity (CORE) Activity
Cooperative Development Organisation
Implementing Partners and Organisations
Cooperative College of Zambia (CCZ)
Period of Implementation
Geographic scope
Africa: Rwanda
Budget
Donor(s)
Bilateral Aid: U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Sector(s)
Type of Activity
Summary
Land O'Lakes Venture37 (Venture37) is pleased to present the five-year Cooperative Resilience and Equity Activity (CORE). CORE will foster vibrant, sustainable cooperative ecosystems in Rwanda and Zambia, in which self-managed cooperatives and all their members flourish economically and socially. Through CORE, Venture37 will take a localized and market-responsive approach, engaging market actors, including women and youth, in activity design, implementation and measurement to tailor activities to their unique needs while strengthening their capacity to create sustainable solutions.
Through its affiliation with Land O'Lakes, Inc.—a $19 billion global cooperative agribusiness in the United States--Venture37 will apply over 100 years of U.S. cooperative business expertise and exclusive access to a wide range of commercial technical knowledge. Achievements and learnings from Venture37's implementation of the USAID Cooperative Development Activity 4 (CD4) (Rwanda and Malawi, 2018–2023) will inform impactful activities in Zambia and enable scaling to new Rwandan districts under CORE.
Project Objectives
Leveraging best practices from Venture37’s 32 years of Cooperative Development Program (CDP) implementation, CORE will:
- Inclusively strengthen the capacity of cooperatives by dynamically responding to their unique challenges and market opportunities by adapting existing, tested tools.
- Improve the cooperative enabling environment by working with private and public service providers to deliver market-responsive and well-coordinated services to cooperatives.
- Spur innovation, learning and continuous improvement in the local and global development community through embedded applied research.
Across both countries, CORE will support over 160 dairy, horticulture and oilseed cooperatives (40 directly and 120 indirectly) and 12,000 members in partnership with local market actors, resulting in a 30 percent increase in cooperative sales. CORE will generate more than $2.3 million in leverage through investments from cooperatives, local partners, and technical assistance (TA) from Land O'Lakes, Inc. CORE will also engage in preliminary research in Ghana to inform future cooperative development activities.
Local stakeholders
Cooperative College of Zambia (CCZ)
Zambian Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprise Development (MSME)