Abstract
This paper historically dissects the contribution of cooperative Movement in sustainable development of the Matengo Highlands. The main objectives were to examine the evolution and development of the coffee farming in the Matengo Highlands. This examination is important as it directly relates to the formation, evolution and formation of cooperative movement as a colonial strategy in controlling production and marketing of coffee as an export crop which earned the colonial power raw materials and foreign exchange. This contribution was also important to the paper to address so that it is able to know how cooperative movement was instrumental in bringing about sustainable development through the handling of coffee farming and the marketing thereof. In this case the role of state in the promotion of cooperative movement through enactment of laws, legislations and passing of policies was also under focus in this paper. The paper benefited from a research which was structured in a historical design so that to capture the dynamics of changes and transformations through which coffee production and marketing was implemented in the Matengo Highlands in Tanzania. The research was basically qualitative in nature due to the types of historical sources to be used in developing this both primary and secondary sources. The main argument of this paper is that cooperative life in the Matengo Highlands which has been marked by series of changes emanating from legislations, policies and statements. Cooperation here had existed in precolonial period as an economic production and socio-economic strategy. Cooperation was self-sustaining given the economic and historical conditions obtaining in the Matengo Highlands. The colonial state during British administration institutionalized cooperative movement for the purpose of promoting the export crop economy. Postcolonial state inherited the colonial system of suppressing farmers’ cooperative movement to allow the state accumulate surplus value. The situation was much more precarious during the so-called mlango mmoja cooperative movement under the Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies. As a result, AMCOs are no longer organs for sustainable development of the people who were systematically reduced to poverty-stricken situation.
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