IRFITCO Rural Financial Inclusion project
IRFITCO: Four Years of Building Rural Financial Inclusion Through Cooperatives
For millions of rural households across East Africa, access to safe, reliable financial services has long depended on the strength of the cooperative institutions closest to them. Recognizing this, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) partnered with three cooperative development organizations, ACCOSCA, the Co-operative Development Foundation of Canada (CDF Canada), and the Irish League of Credit Unions Foundation (ILCUF), to launch the Improving Rural Financial Inclusion Through Cooperatives (IRFITCO) Project. Implemented from March 2017 to September 2021, IRFITCO set out to strengthen financial cooperatives serving rural communities across Tanzania, Malawi, and Ethiopia, and by the time it concluded, it had left a lasting mark on the cooperative movement in each of these countries.
IRFITCO was conceived on the understanding that rural financial inclusion could not be achieved through financial products alone. It required strong, well-governed cooperative institutions capable of serving rural populations reliably, innovative financial services designed with rural realities in mind, and a policy environment that actively supported, rather than constrained, the growth of financial cooperatives. With IFAD providing the funding and strategic mandate, the three implementing partners each took responsibility for a different country, ACCOSCA in Tanzania, CDF Canada in Malawi, and ILCUF in Ethiopia, allowing the project to draw on each organization’s regional expertise while pursuing a shared set of objectives across all three markets. This structure reflected a broader principle that has guided much of ACCOSCA’s partnership work: that cooperative development is strongest when it is locally led and regionally coordinated.
Across its four years, IRFITCO’s impact took shape through concrete institutional change rather than incremental adjustment. In Tanzania, ACCOSCA led the revival of the Savings and Credit Co-Operative Union of Tanzania (SCCULT), an achievement that went well beyond a symbolic relaunch. It involved rebuilding the union’s governance structures, establishing its staffing, and setting a clear strategic direction, effectively restoring a national apex body that rural SACCOs across the country could once again rely on for support and representation.
This institutional rebuilding was matched by a sustained investment in human capacity. ACCOSCA delivered training programmes covering governance, product development, regulation, and ethics, equipping cooperative leaders and staff with the practical skills needed to run safer, more effective institutions. To ensure this knowledge endured beyond the life of the project, ACCOSCA also produced a set of lasting policy resources, including inspection manuals, risk management frameworks, and financial literacy materials, tools that continue to guide cooperative practice long after IRFITCO’s formal close. The project further extended its reach through knowledge-sharing exposure visits to Ghana, Gambia, Kenya, and Nigeria, giving Tanzanian cooperative leaders direct exposure to successful models elsewhere on the continent and reinforcing the value of pan-African peer learning within the cooperative movement.
Taken as a whole, IRFITCO’s three-part strategy, strengthening institutional capacity, introducing innovation, and advancing policy dialogue, meant that its impact was designed to persist. Strengthened institutions like SCCULT continue to operate; trained leaders continue to apply what they learned; and the manuals, frameworks, and policy documents developed under the project remain in active use. When IRFITCO formally concluded with a virtual closing workshop on 20 September 2021, marking four years of collaboration between IFAD, ACCOSCA, CDF Canada, and ILCUF, it did so having built not a temporary programme, but a set of durable institutional foundations for rural financial inclusion across Tanzania, Malawi, and Ethiopia.
IRFITCO stands as a clear example of what coordinated, regionally led cooperative development can achieve. By combining capacity building, innovation, and policy engagement, and by entrusting implementation to organizations with deep local roots, the project delivered impact that outlasted its own timeline, strengthening institutions, equipping leaders, and shaping policy environments that continue to serve rural cooperative members across East Africa today.
