5.000

Ivory Coast

Key figures

Number of cooperatives per sector
Employees and members per sector

Research overview

 

Responding to challenges and existing knowledge gaps facing the cooperative movement, this mapping research seeks to provide exhaustive information on cooperatives worldwide. This is achieved through a process jointly conducted by the ICA and its four regional offices – Cooperatives of the Americas, Cooperatives Europe, ICA Africa, and ICA Asia-Pacific – using a common methodology. Each office collected the input of ICA members present in the countries within its geographic area, by using the same questionnaire, and completing it with relevant national statistics, in order to obtain an accurate picture of the national situation. Mapping out cooperatives in each country provides a more precise picture of the cooperative context at national and regional levels, enhances the movement's visibility, networking, partnerships opportunities, as well as advocacy, and empowers cooperators by providing them tools for positive change.

This webpage presents a snapshot of the key figures research results for Côte d'Ivoire. For more information and the full research results, you can download the full report and highlights using the links above.

History

 

Ivory Coast; also known as Côte d'Ivoire, benefits from natural conditions favorable to agriculture. It is a country which has a rich and diversified agriculture (coffee, cocoa, rubber, cotton cashew, rice, banana, maize, etc.) the farmers are the essential link in this agriculture.

They come together in cooperative societies to defend their interests and only a few cooperative societies exist in other non-agricultural sectors.  More than 90 % of cooperatives are in the agricultural sector. Côte d'Ivoire has more than 5,000 cooperatives, including more than 3,000 in the coffee-cocoa sector and about 300 in the cotton sector.

Overview

 

Ivory Coast counts one ICA member organization, the Fédération des unions des sociétés coopératives des Producteurs de la Filière Coton de Côte d'Ivoire (FPC CI Coop CA).

FPC CI Coop CA is a member of the apex/national body; Organization interprofessionnelle agricole de la filière coton de Côte d'Ivoire (INTERCOTON) Fonds Interprofessionnel pour la Recherche et le Conseil Agricole (FIRCA) and its membership mainly cover producer cooperatives engaged in agricultural activities.

 

 

 

Legal framework

 

The legal framework analysis aims to provide general knowledge of the national cooperative legislation and of its main characteristics and contents, with particular regard to those aspects of regulation regarding the identity of cooperatives and its distinction from other types of business organisations, notably the for-profit shareholder corporation.

It aims to evaluate whether the national legislation in place supports or hampers the development of cooperatives, and is therefore “cooperative friendly” or not, and the degree to which it may be considered so, also in comparison to the legislation in force in other countries of the ICA region, or at the supranational level.

In addition, the research aims to provide recommendations for eventual renewal of the legal frameworks in place in order to understand what changes in the current legislation would be necessary to improve its degree of “cooperative friendliness”, which is to say, to make the legislation more favourable to cooperatives, also in consideration of their specific identity. This webpage presents a snapshot of the legal framework analysis results for Côte d'Ivoire.

 

 

Ivorian cooperatives are governed by the Uniform Act on the Law of Cooperatives (Uniform Act) adopted on December 15, 2010 in Lomé (Togo), applicable in the 17 member countries of OHADA. Specifically, in addition to the Uniform Act, we can cite Law No. 2015-537 of 20 July 2015 on agricultural guidance, the General Tax Code of 2017, the Labor Code. These various texts also provide for some provisions concerning cooperatives, in particular agricultural cooperatives which constitute the vast majority of Ivorian cooperatives.

 

Cooperative friendliness

The Uniform Act and national texts theoretically create an environment conducive to the development of cooperatives, in particular agricultural cooperatives. This is the case of the incentives provided for by the agricultural orientation law for the benefit of agricultural cooperatives.

At the fiscal level, there is no specific scheme for the taxation of cooperatives. They are subject to the general tax code even if there are specific taxes and exemptions depending on the corporate purpose and sector of activity of the cooperative.

 

Key recommendations for improvement

It is recommended to set up a tax system specific to cooperatives. This taxation could include two types of measures: measures general to all cooperative societies and measures specific to specific categories of cooperatives depending on their object or activity. Just as it is suggested to expressly integrate the cooperative into the beneficiaries of the benefits of the investment code.

 

Conclusions

In conclusion, the State should initiate actions in favor of the promotion of the cooperative movement through training, including the celebration, each year of the International Day of Cooperatives.

At the OHADA level, it is suggested to assess the implementation of the Uniform Act, which has entered into force for almost 10 years. Such a global assessment could make it possible to better identify the difficulties in implementing the Uniform Act in order to find suitable solutions

 

The legal frameworks analysis is a tool developed under the ICA-EU Partnership #coops4dev. It is an overview of the national legal frameworks at the time of writing. The views expressed within are not necessarily those of the ICA, nor does a reference to any specific content constitute an explicit endorsement or recommendation by the ICA. 

 

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