Co-operative Education and 'Training in Africa

Abstract

Treated in its generality, co-operative education and training has four major characteristics on its constituents - the members, leaders and employed staff. First, is the awareness or general knowledge about the co-operative enterprise. Second, is the acquisition component where the major constituents of the co-operative enterprise - the members, employed staff and the Board, need space and opportunity to acquire the required education, training and information from a given source of delivery. Thirdly, it has impact or effect characteristics in that people would like to observe improvement in the understanding of the acquired skills in terms of performance of the groups in the selected co-operative enterprise and four, the behavioural component in that the behaviour of those who had the opportunity of accessing co-operative education and training, would have changed on how they treated their co-operative society. Those who had access to education and training would take their co-operative society as an instrument of changing their economic life through improved services to the members as the ultimate goal of the co-operative enterprise.