The potential of land shareholding cooperatives for inclusive agribusiness development in Africa

Land Shareholding Cooperatives (LSCs) centralize management over fragmented farmland by converting farmers' plots into shares. While these cooperatives have been widely successful in boosting agricultural commercialization among rural smallholders in China, their potential has not yet been recognized in the African context. To fill this gap, we present and discuss a theoretical framework based on recent literature, an in-depth case study from Uganda and quantitative analyses of data on horticultural cooperatives from Senegal and agricultural and livestock cooperatives from Uganda, Malawi, Madagascar, Rwanda and Kenya. We uncover the existence of cooperatives built on land sharing schemes in different parts of Africa and especially in Rwanda. We find that these LSCs are more likely to mobilize collective marketing and have a higher business-membership ratio than traditional cooperatives, and we derive a few implications for policymaking.