This document contains Rwanda’s National Cooperatives Promotion Policy. The policy highlights the importance of cooperatives, reviews their past and present, and scans through the constraints and opportunities they reflect in the national development. Further the document lays out policy, strategies and action plan aimed at orienting and ensuring that cooperatives become a viable tool for social-economic development in Rwanda.

The government of Rwanda views cooperatives as a potential vehicle through which the cooperatives members could create employment and expand access to income-generating activities, develop their business potential, including entrepreneurial and managerial capacities through education and training; increase savings and investment, and improve social well-being with special emphasis on gender equality, housing, education, health care and community development.