Reflection on Cooperatives, Transformation and Role of Archives in Tanzania

Abstract

Cooperative development in Tanzania took different forms and scenario, cooperatives in that country has long history as from 1920's. That divide cooperative into two major categories, one being colonial cooperatives that was mostly agriculture cooperatives aiming to feed the colonial economies, and secondly the post independence cooperatives which was basically officialised model of cooperatives, basically they were established by the state and the community to fit in the readily established and directed structures. The promoted and developed cooperative mostly has remained not documented, their either going to lose their history for cooperative information or lose the track from their historical trend on cooperative business and to create a gape the new generation will not capture. The paper aimed at evaluating the scenario which shows the elements that becomes the root source for the loss of cooperative information for developing of cooperative archive. It will also develop strategies that can be used to have some documents available for archival development basing on Tanzania experience