June 25, 2008
Wheeler Speaks at Liberia’s National Roundtable Conference
ACDI/VOCA-Liberia Chief of Party and Country Representative Robin Wheeler presented at the Liberia’s Second National Roundtable Conference, which was held at city hall in Monrovia June 23-25. The event brought together key actors and donors in cooperative development to discuss the future of cooperatives in Liberia and the rehabilitation of the Cooperative Development Agency (CDA).
The three-day event to rejuvenate the CDA and form ties among the stakeholders was hosted by the Liberian Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and SOCODEVI, an international development NGO. It was themed “Creating a Conducive Environment for Cooperative Development in Liberia: the Rehabilitation of CDA and Revision of the Cooperative Law of Liberia.” Cooperative development, which is an important tool in increasing rural farmers’ incomes, was severely hampered by Liberia’s 14-year civil war, which ended in 2003. Funding for the conference was provided by the Canadian International Development Agency, USAID’s Sustainable Tree Crop Program and the MOA.
Wheeler gave the opening and closing speeches at the event, remarking upon ACDI/VOCA’s roots in cooperative development and its historical legacy in Liberia.
“It is very fitting to speak at this event considering that ACDI/VOCA grew out of the cooperative movement in the United States, is celebrating 45 years of existence this year and was instrumental in the early development of cooperatives in Liberia,” Wheeler said.
He remarked upon the important legacy left in Liberia by ACDI/VOCA’s precursor organizations, beginning in 1976 with an assessment of cooperatives in Liberia as part of the USAID-funded Development Program Grant. Other activities in the 1970s and 1980s helped to establish supply and marketing cooperatives as part of a project funded by World Bank and USAID, assisting the Cooperative Development Division of the MOA—the predecessor to the CDA—by providing advisors in cooperative management, accounting and training, and fielding volunteer consultants to provide technical assistance to the MOA, the Liberia Credit Union, the Agricultural and Cooperative Development Bank and the Liberian Development Foundation.
In February 2008, ACDI/VOCA returned to Liberia to implement the USDA-funded Livelihood Improvement for Farming Enterprises project which improves the incomes of 5,600 cocoa farmers in Bong, Nimba and Lofa counties, and the income-generation component of the USAID-funded Land Rights and Community Forestry Program which works to sustainably improve the livelihoods of populations living in forested areas of Nimba and Sinoe counties.
“Our planned activities under both of these projects, and future activities include facilitating the development of healthy, democratic cooperatives or producer organizations in the Liberian context,” Wheeler said. “Therefore, we are a major stakeholder in the development of the CDA and cooperative law here, and seek to ensure that they will foster and protect the rights of Liberian smallholder farmers who must form the backbone of a newly revitalized agricultural sector.”
A major challenge facing the MOA is the need to restructure the CDA in order to develop national priorities with governmental stakeholders and non-state actors and to revise the legal regulations related to co-ops.
Participants included Liberia Vice President Joseph Boakai, Minster of Agriculture J. Chris Toe, other top governmental officials, cooperative organizers, farmers and nongovernmental organization representatives from UNDP, FAO, UNHCR, GTZ, ACDI/VOCA, Catholic Relief Services and others.
To learn more about ACDI/VOCA’s work in Liberia click here.