IN SHORT: McLoud Malonza, Chair of both Co-operative Bank Holdings and the Co-operative Alliance of Kenya, was elected Chairperson of the International Cooperative Alliance Africa at the ICA-Africa General Assembly in Maputo, Mozambique on June 11, winning all 65 votes cast and defeating two Nigerian contenders, Lawrence Bale and Ojo Oladayo Aindehinde, both representing the Cooperative Federation of Nigeria. ICA-Africa brings together more than 50 cooperative organisations across 21 African countries. Kenya’s cooperative sector links more than 15 million Kenyans to cooperatives and SACCOs that collectively mobilise billions in savings and investments.
Kenya has secured the chairmanship of the International Cooperative Alliance Africa in a unanimous 65-vote sweep at the Maputo General Assembly, placing Malonza, one of Kenya’s most experienced cooperative sector leaders, at the head of the continent’s most significant cooperative institution at a moment when cooperatives are gaining recognition as a primary vehicle for financial inclusion, agricultural transformation and job creation across Africa. The election, which came weeks after Kenya’s CAK co-hosted the East African cooperative leadership summit, positions Kenya as the defining voice in shaping how the AfCFTA and African Union frameworks engage the cooperative sector.
- The 65 out of 65 vote count is a striking signal of continental consensus. Both Nigerian candidates stood for election but withdrew or lost all ballots cast, giving Malonza a clean mandate that no challenger could contest. The result reflects Kenya’s established status as the cooperative sector’s most developed ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa: more than 15 million Kenyans participate in cooperatives and SACCOs, a penetration rate that no other African country approaches at scale.
- Kenya’s cooperative model has produced several of the country’s most systemically important financial institutions. Co-operative Bank Kenya, which Malonza chairs through Co-operative Bank Holdings, is one of Kenya’s five largest banks by assets and was built entirely from cooperative sector capital. The bank’s roots in the SACCO movement make it a living demonstration of cooperative finance producing institutional-grade banking outcomes.
- ICA-Africa was founded in 1968 as the regional arm of the International Cooperative Alliance, bringing together cooperative federations, unions and apex bodies from 21 African countries. Its mandate covers cooperative governance standards, advocacy to African governments and regional bodies, and capacity building for cooperative organisations that collectively represent tens of millions of members across the continent.
- Malonza outlined specific priorities at the Maputo ceremony: strengthening cooperative governance, enhancing member engagement, promoting youth and women leadership, supporting cooperative entrepreneurship, expanding regional trade through cooperative networks and positioning cooperatives as drivers of Africa’s economic transformation. He emphasised engagement with the African Union, regional economic communities and global partners including the ICA global body headquartered in Brussels.
- The AfCFTA dimension is significant. Cooperative enterprises across Africa handle a disproportionate share of agricultural trade, small business financing and rural savings mobilisation. Cooperative networks that can coordinate across borders represent one of the most scalable mechanisms for generating the intra-African trade flows that the AfCFTA framework is designed to incentivise. Under Malonza’s leadership, ICA-Africa’s engagement with the AfCFTA Secretariat in Accra could become a substantive commercial and policy relationship rather than a ceremonial one.
The election comes at a sensitive moment for the Kenyan cooperative sector. The Finance Bill 2026, currently before Parliament, contains provisions that directly affect SACCOs and cooperative financial institutions, including proposed changes to mobile money VAT and KRA data access powers that the sector has flagged as potentially damaging to financial inclusion. Malonza’s election to ICA-Africa chairmanship gives the sector an additional platform to make its voice heard in national and continental policy debates beyond its domestic lobby channel through the CAK.
The Bigger Picture: Africa’s cooperative sector is underappreciated as an economic infrastructure asset. Cooperatives represent a model of capital aggregation that does not require external equity investment, regulatory licensing as a bank or formal corporate structures to function effectively for low-income members. Kenya’s Co-operative Bank demonstrates what emerges when that model is taken to institutional scale: a billion-dollar bank owned by the people who use it. Malonza’s ICA-Africa chairmanship is an opportunity to translate that Kenyan demonstration into a continental template for cooperative-led financial inclusion and agricultural value chain finance that reaches the 700 million Africans still outside formal financial systems.
Source: Capital FM, June 11 2026
