Positioning Co-operatives as Partners in Global Health Agenda: How to go about it in Africa

Abstract

Abstract
Promoting global health is a trending agenda in global development. Its achievement calls for the involvement of various stakeholders including cooperatives. As socially responsible member-based organizations, co-operatives in
Africa are potential partners in promoting global health but there is a need to strategize best approaches for their involvement. This paper shares strategies through which co-operatives can, directly and indirectly, engage in the process. Guided by the theory of social suffering and theory of access, the paper applies an exploratory literature review approach to collect secondary data. Critical analysis of various works of literature have been done where 41 kinds of literature on cooperatives and global health were used based on a developed inclusion and exclusion criteria. A review protocol was used as a tool to guide the review with a focus on: health and demographic trends in Africa, options for co-operative model inclusion in global health, and the local and global cases. Further, consultations with stakeholders in co-operatives were done to collect evidence on local initiatives towards health issues. The findings show that different empirically proven strategies exist for co-operatives to engage directly and indirectly in promoting global health. The strategies include: establishing hospitalization services, providing health insurance, producing and supplying medical and nutritional products, operating mobile clinics, engage in health research and dissemination of health information, coordination of health service access and others. It is concluded that co-operatives can be direct and indirect reliable partners in promoting global health agenda in Africa. The paper calls for awakening the African co-operative movement, policy reforms and stakeholders’ collaboration in mobilizing resources and investments for active inclusion of the co-operative model in global health agenda.