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    Neoliberalism and the revival of agricultural cooperatives: The case of the coffee sector in Uganda

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    Agricultural cooperatives have seen a comeback in subā€Saharan Africa. After the collapse of many weakly performing monopolist organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, strengthened cooperatives have emerged since the 2000s. Scholarly knowledge about the stateā€“cooperative relations in which this ā€œrevivalā€ takes place remains poor. Based on new evidence from Uganda's coffee sector, this paper discusses the political economy of Africa's cooperative revival. The authors argue that donors' and African governments' renewed support is framed in largely apolitical terms, which obscures the contested political and economic nature of the revival. In the context of neoliberal restructuring processes, state and nonā€state institutional support to democratic economic organizations with substantial redistributional agendas remains insufficient. The politicalā€“economic context in Ugandaā€”and potentially elsewhere in Africaā€”contributes to poor terms of trade for agricultural cooperatives while maintaining significant state control over some cooperative activities to protect the status quo interests of big capital and state elites. These conditions are unlikely to produce a conflictā€free, substantial, and sustained revival of cooperatives, which the new promoters of cooperatives suggest is under way
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