Increasing capacity and output market linkage with member organizations Setit has experienced significant development since Agriterra started providing capacity building services to the union in 2012. The union has increased its output marketing performance, has put in a place a professional management team, and has transformed the union from a loss making organization into a profitable one. In the 2016 Action Plan key intervention focus will be in particular on strengthening the member Primary Cooperatives (PCs) in general and creating a strong commercial linkage between the PCs and the Union in terms of output marketing. Throughout the years that Agriterra worked with Setit, is was learned that intervention on PC level is also required in order to make significant changes on the Union level. Therefore in the 2014/15 action plan a comprehensive assessment was conducted to evaluate the strength of PCs in order to get an insight on the main challenges and gaps that exist at the lower level. Based on the assessment results and workshops conducted, different capacity building activities have been proposed and developed. The main emphasis is to transform the PCs to assure that individual farmers whose economic and social benefit are maintained under each PC, are strengthened through increasing the benefits of organized output marketing by the cooperatives and the union. For the capacity building activities of the PCs, a leftover budget from CORDAID is to be used with cost sharing basis between CORDAID, Union, and PCs on certain activities. For capacitating PCs, the union will temporarily recruit 3 new support and monitoring professional staff, this team is expected to be with the PCs at least 20 days per month, to coach guide and monitor the capacity building activities. Other union based activities will be funded by Agriterra on a 50:50 cost sharing basis with the union. Whereas the CORDAID funded Action Plan will mainly focus on the union-PC relationship, the Agriterra funded Action Plan will mainly focus on the union in terms of strengthening the market modalities, and boosting the management profile of the union to accommodate upcoming projects. Output marketing target: 3500 MT sold on domestic or export markets.

The proposal of this project is focussing on a couple of main elements indicated below. In order to improve the overall performance of Setit, the 2016 Agriterra action plan will focus on:
- Training on proper documentation and record keeping systems.
- Introduce member ID cards, and produce a “fact sheet” which outlines the cooperative objectives and the benefits to the farmer on being a member and promoting participation on output marketing activities.
- Training on preparing cooperative organizational and business plan.
- Training on introducing and developing policy and procedure manuals at PC level. Manuals include HR, purchasing, marketing, credit, finance, and input distribution. Manuals will be developed to regulate procedures for internal use.
- Assist the PC’s in implementing the procedure manuals.
- Training provided for PC financial staff on accounting and financial management systems with emphasis on internal control mechanisms.
- Lobby government support to increase auditing services to cooperatives.
- Training on appropriate mechanisms to provide demand driven products for members, including  household consumables.
- Implementing  and implementing quality control mechanisms for the purchase of member commodities.
- Increase youth participation, and align with government initiatives to provide land for the youth.
- Cooperative governance training to the board members.
- Cooperative governance to board members on internal control mechanisms.
- Assist the PC in staff recruitment, including storekeeper, accountant/manager for selected PC’s on cost sharing basis.
- Collaborate with SBN to promote radio announcements to reach PC members on important current news.

The objective is to improve the cooperative and union’s performance by cooperative leadership strengthening and through formalizing their activities, creating member participation and accountability. Improving the cooperative performance (better output marketing, enhanced membership services) leads to increased member participation and improved socio and economic empowerment.