By Aminata S. Kuyateh
The 2024 Western Africa Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) regional forum has been held in the Gambia hosted by the National Association of Cooperative Credit Unions of the Gambia (NACCUG) in collaboration with the African confederation of co-operative savings and credit Association (ACCOSCA) with the theme “empowering financial cooperative to provide sustainable financial and environmental responsibility”.
The event was held at the GTUCCU regional office in Brikama, which brought together experts, cooperators across the African continent and beyond to discuss relevant issues about the cooperative industry.
The objective of the conference is empowering SACCOs to deploy innovative, compliant and inclusive growth strategies for a more significant impact in communities, also the outcome is to equipping savings and credit cooperatives with the necessary tools and strategies to drive sustainable and impactful growth in their communities.
Speaking, minister of trade, Hon. Baboucarr O. Joof expressed heartfelt appreciation to the organizers for their tireless effort and unwavering commitment to the advancement of our community, without any fear of contradiction. “I dare pronounce that only through capacity building programmes of this kind, we can build the requisite talent that can propel this movement to the desired destiny”.
“Our collective vision for a more prosperous and inclusive future for our generation and those unborn, requires that we remain socially responsible, cooperate among ourselves and nurture responsible leadership and establish resilient structures”, he said.
He added that the concept of micro-credit is to transform the lives of local communities especially the women and “ we can achieve our target in the sustainable development goals on poverty by anchoring all cooperative principles”.
He disclosed that the government of the Gambia has developed a national policy whose mission is to create an enabling environment for effective ‘all inclusive participation’ of stakeholders by guiding and assisting people in their efforts, to build, expand, diversified, innovative and sustainable cooperatives. Also the GAmbia recently launched the 2023-2027 Recovery Focused National Development Plan which contains targets that resonate with the cooperative principles and it behooves on us the leaders to partner government institutions in order to attain our common destination.
He hailed ACCOSCA and NACCUG for their tireless efforts in organizing this convergence, which holds profound significance as the first international event hosted in the newly inaugurated conference center.
