ABSTRACT
In sub-Saharan Africa, small-scale agriculture is the major source of livelihood. Most smallholders have established exchange relations which to some extent connect them to a wider economic context. This chapter focuses on the economic and social role of cooperative organizations in rural areas of Kenya. It illuminates how the capacity of cooperatives as agents of change is influenced by the interplay between, on the one hand their organizational structure and institutional interdependencies and, on the other, the local environments in which they operate. A cooperative enterprise of the agricultural service society type has commercial relations both with a ‘neutral’ market and its own members. Even in colonial times, governments made attempts, with various degrees of coercion, to introduce local organizations aimed at commercializing smallholder agriculture. In Kenya and Northern and Southern Rhodesia, the expansion of cooperatives was affected by substantial white settler communities and the protection of their particular interests.
