Making Progress...

well a bit! I am now set up in Jinja Town. I have found a nice hotel called Hotel Triangle that have done me a good rate for the next 2 months. My room, complete with bath and fridge (which means I can do my own food when I want to) overlooks Lake Victoria and I love sitting on the balcony watching the Ibis, Crested Cranes, hawks, kingfishers and the fruit bats all swooping by so closely that you you can see their markings clearly. It is nice to feel settled here and know it is my home for the next couple of months. Jinja is a good town, lots of nice cafes/restaurants, good shops where you can get most of what you need (including ginger and lemon tea!) and is easy to get around, walking or on the back on the motorbike taxis or bicycle taxis. I am all set up for these now as I have bought myself a bright yellow hoodie to wear, to keep me warm in some of the chilly evenings we are having that I did not prepare myself for and the hoddie also acts as some kind of protective/reflective wear!

Work is going well. I had some great field trips at the end of last week during which I visited lots of co-operatives. I will be conducting my research with a young farmers co-operative called Kiygazi Youth Association, in an area called Kangulimira, about an hour from Jinja. It is pretty rural setting, about half an hours drive til he Kangulimia Trading Centre (cluster of shops, bars, houses on the raod) and then another half an hour on farm roads/dirt roads to the farmers land. They have about 70 members who are all farmers - farming maize and pineapples and also have some pigs. Mainly young men but they are doing their best to increase the number of women. They share ideas and skills with each other and have been able to access training from UCA on new areas of farming such as keeping pigs. They are also selling their produce together. This has enabled them to increase their income and some have been able to buy motor bikes or improve their housing as a result and all said that the extra income allowed them to pay school fees for their children. There is a widespread belief in the need to educate children for their future and therefore the future of the family. They are keen to work with me and be part of the research and so I will be visiting them again this Friday to attend their Executive Committee Meeting and visit some of the members farms and then about another 12 times to do different activities with them! On my departure they gave me two lovely big pineapples that were delicious - was anyone else aware that pineapples grow on the ground and not in trees? They had a good laugh about that one!

Next stop was Kangulimira Area Co-operative Enterprise (ACE), the umbrella organisation for all of the co-operatives in the area. They are meant to play a role in training and supporting all the farmers co-ops in the area and are also involved with value addition with the farmers. This is process whereby they try and manage other parts of a value chain of a product(a business term for the chain of activities involved in developing a product). This in turn generally increases their income. This ACE are therefore involved with adding value for farmers growing pineapples and are involved with drying pineapples and making pineapple wine. The dried pineapple is grown organically and is fair trade and eventually ends up on Sainsbury's counters. They gave me some of the dried pineapple to taste and it was delicious. I am enjoying this food tasting, an unexpected perk of my research!

I also visited a savings and credit co-operative (SACCO) in an area called Buwenge, about a 30 minute drive from Jinja. It is called Joy Ford SACCO and I am also planning to do my research with them. They have 700 members who having savings accounts with them and who might have a loan ith them. They firmly believe in savings first and then when a person has developed this skill of managing money they then qualify for a loan. They aim to have young people as members which is a key service that they provide as many other SACCOs or banks do not like to loan money to young people as they see them as risky. However this SACCO believes that young poeple can manage savings and loanings if they are given the opportunity and the right training. They therefore offer business advice and other training to their members. Their youth members take loans for different reasons for the set up of a business, young farmers, or the motorbike taxi people, or hairdressers and also to pay fees for education or emergencies such as paying for funeral costs or health needs. I am looking forward to researching them further to understand how they have successfully loaned money to young people when other banks and SACCOs have failed to do this.

I have also set up camp at the SPW Uganda office and it is great to be back in an SPW office. They have given me a desk and are kindly allowing me to use their internet and helping me lots!

My biggest challenges at the moment are sorting out transport; UCA were kind enough to lend me a vehicle and a driver for the trips last week but this week I need to make another plan. Public Transport is there but you cannot rely on it to get to where you need to go on time - this is mainly as the mini buses that drive in that direction need to fill up with passengers before they are willing to leave. My other options are car taxis or trying to borrow a car and drive myself. The other challenge is to get the members of the co-operatives to tell me about the real situation rather than what they think I want to hear. I think the key to this will be repeat visits to the co-operatives to build up trust and this means solving the transport issue asap!

Other than work I have been enjoying nice walks around Jinja, enjoying different views of the Nile river and Lake Victoria at different spots around Jinja, going to the lovely craft shops on the Main Street, seeing SPW colleagues here for a drink and looking after Nik when Stoke City lost 7 nil to Chelsea!!!

Til the next time...

In the beginning..

there is me sat in an internet cafe in Garden City shopping centre in Kampala. I arrived here on the back of a motor bike taxi, helmetless, clutching the poor driver around the midriff, while telling him to slow down! Not sure I will ever get used to this mode of transport.

I am in Uganda undertaking the field work research for my PhD. I arrived a week ago and will be here for the next 12 weeks. My PhD focuses on young people's involvement with co-operative enterprises in both Uganda and Lesotho. Here in Uganda I will be working with 3 youth co-operatives, trying to find out the details of how being part of a co-operative benefits them.

In many countries in Africa there are high rates of unemployment among young people and a large numbers of young people, this creates the need to find ways to provide them with a job or an income. This is where co-operatives come in, they are a way for a group of people to set up a business together. Working as a group gives them advantages; they can combine their resources (whether it be land or money or their skills and their ideas) and they can increase their bargaining power with other stakeholders. In short it can enable them to build a stronger and more effective business. Co-operative enterprises also focus on members working together in a values driven manner - working democratically, showing and acting upon concern for the wider community, equity and self-help. In this way they operate as a different kind of business that has benefits beyond the important profit that a business generates.

In Uganda co-operatives have a long history; they have been around for 100 years or so and there is an established set of structures that support the development of co-operatives. Generally co-operatives have been agricultural co-ops where groups of farmers work together to sell their produce, as a group they can command better prices. They also buy necessary supplies together such as fertiliser and they are able to get these for cheaper. Today farmer co-ops are still prevalent but there is also a growth of savings and credit co-ops that aim to provide banking services to people that cannot access the formal banking system - either because they are too far from a bank or they do not have the capital to set a bank account up. There are also co-ops for people involved in transport - such as my friends on the motor bike taxis, who work together saving their profits to mend their bikes or buy new ones, one day perhaps they will even buy helmets for their passengers! There are also co-ops making handicrafts or setting up catering services; a real range of areas. My interest lies in the co-ops that have been established by young people. The main co-operative support organisation here in Uganda is the Uganda Co-operative Alliance (UCA) and they have been busy trying to encourage young people to set up co-ops and have managed to set up 60 across Uganda - they are mainly agricultural or savings and credit co-ops. It is these groups that I will be focussing on.

So with that quick introduction over - what have I been up to? Well I managed to arrive pre-volcanic ash cloud eruption and landed in Uganda on a sunny Sunday morning. After a day in Kampala Nik and I had a nice few days holiday in on the River Nile. We had a stunning view of the river from how tent and enjoyed watching the rafters go down the nearby Bugali Falls, the storms coming in and out and the absolutely beautiful bird life. We are now back in Kampala following a good bus ride that took 2 hours and cost 1.20 GBP each and I have had my first few days meeting with UCA who will be supporting me while I am here. I have been walking into meet UCA from our hotel which is about a 30 minute walk on the way there, all down hill and about 45 minutes on the way home as it is all uphill! It is great to walk around (as it means less motor bikes!) as you can take in the city. People in suits bustling up to work, traffic everywhere grid locked as it would be in London on a Monday morning, people selling anything and everything laid out on sheets on the street.

On arrival at UCA in down town Kampala I was warmly welcomed back despite only having spent a short time here in December 2009. I spent Monday catching up with Leonard the General Secretary at UCA, enjoying tea and samosas and talking through the upcoming elections in the UK and in Uganda. Time is taken to have meetings, discussions and do business, it is important to catch up and get to know who you are working with. We have now made a plan for my field work and will be doing some visits to several youth co-operatives this week around the Jinja area. This is a lovely town 80 kms from Kampala where I will be basing myself to complete the case studies of the youth co-ops. We then went for a lovely lunch of traditional Ugandan food and I have to say I love the food here. Fresh fruit and juice for breakfast and for other meals yummy fish, vegetables including my fav sweet potatoes .

It is nice to have Nik here too, easier to do new things with some else the first time around! He has another 1 and a half weeks left before he gets back to the UK and Mosi. But whilst 12 weeks in Uganda seemed an age before I left I think there is so much for me to do in terms of my research and enjoy in terms of Uganda, that it will fly by.