KCU is a Union of over a hundred Primary Cooperative Societies comprising of about 500 coffee producers each and a total of about 60,000 members.

For a primary society to be member to KCU Ltd, it has to own shares in KCU. Each primary cooperative society has about nine committee members, and three representatives to the KCU General Assembly which convenes twice a year – This is the supreme body for KCU Ltd decision making.

    BILABO PRIMARY COOPERATIVE SOCIETY MEETING IN MULEBA RULAR DISTRICTS

Achievements through Fair Trade
I am afraid impact assessment for a large organization like KCU Ltd does not usually point out concrete tangible results.

KCU Ltd as a cooperative movements pools all members’ production costs together, and benefits are equally distributed to the members – It is this sort of unity that makes KCU Ltd with affiliation to the Fair trade movement manage within the hostile liberalized marketing system. We are considering gains of over 60,000 members here, out of the Fair trade benefit, the number which is scattered within an area of about 15000 sq kms. The Fair trade benefits earned by selling about 15% of the total production to the Fair trade system may be briefly narrated as follows: -

• Members have remained together as an organization as they enjoy secure prices and Fair trade premium compared to what they could earn if at all they were divided and selling their coffee to the conventional market.
• KCU has created reliable and permanent partnerships with its customers, especially the 100% Fair trade companies like Twin, Cafedirect, Gepa, Oxfam, Fair trade Original, and Trade Aid Importer, just to mention some. This relationship has created quite a multiplier effect on the way the Fair trade market has been expanding.
• Fair trade social Premium has been put into use at different primary societies. Some societies have built additional classrooms, and health centres, while others have constructed, and repaired roads which head to crop collection centres.
• KCU members are now more informed of market behaviours, and fluctuations in prices can now be more easily explained. This is because we receive plenty of marketing information from our Fair trade partners and other buyers.
• Environmental protection. It is KCU’s strategy as prior pointed out, that at one point; all our primary cooperative societies join the organic coffee project, to ensure protection of our environment.