Co-operatives: Partners for Prosperity
- Published on: 30 January 2026
- Author: Andrée-Anne Côté-St-Laurent - Policy and Advocacy Advisor, Socodevi
For more than 40 years, Socodevi has supported co-operative enterprises and mutuals in their development, governance, and performance.
While our approach is firmly rooted in rural communities in Africa, Latin America, Ukraine, and Asia, it is also expressed through patient, often discreet work supporting public authorities in their institutional reforms. Because fostering prosperous co-operatives also means strengthening the frameworks that make them autonomous, sustainable, profitable, and inclusive.
Expertise in Support of Economic Development
Co-operatives offer a particularly relevant economic pathway in a world marked by crises: in addition to serving as incubators of democracy, they enable collective entrepreneurship, risk-sharing, stronger market positioning, and local anchoring. Guided by principles, they facilitate training, quality assurance, traceability, and therefore the sustainable creation of value.
“Co-operatives matter because not everyone has the same ability to create or sustain a business on their own.”
— Jean-Philippe Marcoux, Executive Director of Socodevi
Across Socodevi’s project portfolio, supported enterprises record on average an 88% improvement in operational performance and quadruple both their gross margin and turnover. They become inclusive enterprises adapted to their realities, as well as solid business partners for both the private and public sectors.
Supporting Ecosystems, Not Just Enterprises
For several years, Socodevi has also acted as a strategic support actor for public authorities and national institutions, helping to strengthen the rules that structure co-operatives and mutuals and govern the co-operative movement.
This patient work is carried out hand in hand with our network of experts, including the Institute for Research and Education for Co-operatives and Mutuals at the Université de Sherbrooke (IRECUS) and the Conseil québécois de la coopération et de la mutualité (CQCM). Our role is to:
- connect stakeholders,
- share inspiring models,
- provide neutral and rigorous technical assistance, and
- amplify the voices of co-operators.
This involves analyzing existing regulations, developing concrete proposals, delivering training, and sometimes even hosting foreign delegations wishing to observe the Québec model from the inside.
Our experience in Mozambique since 2020, as well as in other countries, shows that when ministries engage proactively with co-operative systems—and see how policy, finance, and governance work together in practice—the quality of reforms improves. In January 2026, Socodevi conveyed this message to Ukrainian authorities at The Power of Co-operatives conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, as part of the new Canada-funded HONOR project.
We know that well-structured co-operatives become credible partners for authorities responsible for accelerating local development, as illustrated by Mapathé Bousso, Technical Director of the municipality of Thiès Nord in Senegal, in this video on the co-operative housing project (at 10:38).
What We Share… and What We Bring Back
Our projects around the world also allow us to generate impact in Canada. In fall 2025, Socodevi was invited to testify before Québec’s Committee on Public Finance as part of the modernization of the Co-operatives Act. Our recommendations were directly inspired by initiatives observed elsewhere: the concept of the community-interest co-operative, the inclusion of family members in producer co-operatives, and the establishment of an annual co-operative report, such as the one we supported in Honduras.
Partnerships for prosperity are rooted in this circulation of ideas and best practices, and in a shared commitment to building stronger, more inclusive co-operative enterprises that are better equipped to transform communities.
In co-operation, as in business, structural reforms are sometimes the finest legacy of a well-designed partnership.
