Speech by Mr. Tasilo Joseph Mahuwi, General Manager of the Dunduliza Network of Financial Cooperatives (Tanzania)—Développement international Desjardins, on the occasion of the 2008 Desjardins Group Annual General Meeting

Centre des congrès de Québec, March 29, 2008
(Actual speech may differ from this text)

Dear Partners and Friends:

It is a great honour for me to speak in front of this big assembly of co-operators. My name is Tasilo Joseph Mahuwi, and I am the Managing Director of the Dunduliza network of financial cooperatives, known as SACCOS, in Tanzania. Dunduliza, with 35 affiliated cooperatives, spans throughout the country.

Tanzania, after 47 years of independence, is still among the poorest countries in the world amidst its rich resource base. The missing link of paramount importance is of giving farmers preference for a successful economic take off.

The images of the video have certainly given you impressions on the challenges facing Dunduliza. We are squarely tackling them, thanks to the close collaboration and helping hands of DID and Desjardins.

To follow-up on the video on agricultural financing, we are making leaps and bounds. We are moving from a situation where growers had access to basic savings and credit services only, to one where they now get adequate help at every stage of their production cycles. To them, that means getting better revenues and improving their living conditions. I am sure this is no news to you, since agricultural financing was one of the first issues to be addressed by Alphonse Desjardins in the beginning of the past century, here in the Quebec region.

In other respects, the financial cooperatives in Tanzania are typically atomized and for that reason, have a hard time to adopt high-standard practices to ensure their sustainability. With the help and inspiration of Desjardins, whose model is of great relevance for us and whose experience is of great value, we adopted a federated and well integrated structure that puts the Dunduliza SACCOS in a class of their own. Much has been accomplished, for with less than 1% of the total number of SACCOS in the country, we now command more than 10% of the membership. Good governance and transparency build trust in the public.

We have also recently adopted the distance learning program on management of financial cooperatives that was initially developed by DID for its West African partners, and then adapted to Russia. Through a partnership with a Tanzanian University, DID adapted and translated this training program to the Tanzanian context. To date, 250 cooperative employees including myself were able to access this high-level capacity-building program.

I feel privileged today to attend the Desjardins General Assemblies, as certainly do my colleagues of the Proxfin network Management Committee, who are also in the hall. They are from Mexico, Lithuania, Burkina Faso and Sri Lanka. We have met, here in Quebec City, to discuss the various issues and projects that will make up the Proxfin agenda in the months to come.

Even though we represent community finance institutions that vary greatly in size, age and language used, we have a lot in common, starting with the Desjardins model and values. Among others, we are all federated networks or well integrated structures. We all have a strong focus on answering the needs of every member of the communities we serve. And we all strive to reach a good performance.

To us, Proxfin is the perfect illustration of cooperation, just like this assembly. It is an opportunity for sharing and growing together, helping the others benefit from our successes and strengths, and finding in others the solutions to our problems and weaknesses.

As a young institution, Dunduliza still faces numerous challenges for which we will continue seeking wisdom from Proxfin, DID and Desjardins. And thanks to these precious resources, it is with confidence that we look at the future.

Thank you.