Strategic Intervention Area 5: Organizational Development, Partnerships & Collaboration

Problem Statement: Uganda`s Cooperative sector is largely under developed and often characterised by poor leadership and governance. This challenge permeates from the top most national level cooperatives to the lowest tier of the Rural Producer Organizations. This challenge does not only affect the cooperatives in question but also affects their own capacity to deliver services to their members. Agricultural sector cooperatives are not an exception to this challenge. NAAC seeks to be a model of well governed and well led cooperative that should also model the way for its members and other cooperatives at local and national level. The greatest challenge today for many of the national level cooperatives in Uganda is the lack of moral authority to talk about good governance, good leadership, good systems and effective delivery of services to their members. All this is attributed to the absence of proper systems of internal control, a resigned membership that cannot hold leaders and managers accountable. NAAC will work with partners and other stakeholders to ensure that its own capacity is strengthened there by giving it the moral legitimacy to provide the required support, coaching and mentorship to its members and other cooperatives in the country. NAAC`s ability to influence agricultural sector priorities in favour of the farmers will largely depend on its organizational capabilities, systems of internal control and accountability, transparency and good governance. This strategic area will focus on strengthening internal capacity of NAAC and its members to fully execute the mandate. NAAC will strengthen Capacity to DO, Capacity to BE and Capacity to RELATE as key dimensions of an effective organisation.

Strategic Objective: NAAC has developed internal capacity and is ably representing the agricultural cooperatives in a transparent manner and accountable to members, partners, government and other stakeholders

Strategic Outcome: NAAC is an organization of choice among agricultural cooperatives, partners and stakeholders in the Agricultural sector.

Intervention Strategies shall include:

• Constituency building/Strengthening
• Capacity building for members in Good governance
• Coop Leadership Academy
• Coaching and Mentorship
• Learning exchanges
• Use of ICTs
• An operational membership development strategy
• BDS service provision
• Collaboration, Learning and Adaptation
• Internal board and management capacity strengthening
• Strong internal control systems (Policies, manuals, rules)
• Audit, supervision, M&E

NAAC Guiding principles OD and CLA

• 1. Transparency
• 2. Accountability
• 3. Integrity
• 4. Value for Money
• 5. Learning and Adaptation
• 6. Documentation