Working Alongside Canadian Credit Union Managers

"During the month of January I spent a few weeks with a group of Canadian credit union managers who were in Ghana on a mission with the Canadian Co-operative Association, working to further development of the Ghanaian credit union movement. Every year, CCA sends teams of credit union practitioners from all across Canada to Ghana and Uganda to help provide guidance for the budding credit unions in Africa. Because the Ghanaian credit union movement is much younger than the Canadian credit union movement, the Canadian credit unions are looked upon with significant respect and admiration. I was fortunate to be able to accompany several of the visiting practitioners with their visits to credit unions in Ghana.

Before we set out to the credit unions for the visits, all of the visiting credit union practitioners met with some of the staff of the Credit Union Association of Ghana for a day of in-country training and discussion. The visiting Canadians were all very excited to get to meet with the CUA staff who are absolutely essential in bolstering the credit unions in Ghana. Some of the visiting Canadians had visited Ghana before on another coaching mission through CCA before and were certainly aware of what to expect with their visits while others seemed excited and nervous about their first experience in West Africa.

The training day consisted of things like addressing conflict of interest, recommendations for loan policy development, and good governance. The Canadians and the Ghanaians discussed what sorts of policies worked and what didn’t work in the context and how they could adjust these policies from the Canadian examples to properly address local issues. For example, in Canada, it’s quite easy to assess a member for a loan by accessing their credit history, where as in Ghana, credit reporting doesn’t exist and therefore loans managers are much more dependent upon personal references and guarantors.

I spent the next week traveling from Accra to the Central Region, then on to the Volta Region and finally back to Accra. I met with three credit union managers and six of the visiting coaches in the field. The stories that the coaches shared with me were quite incredible. The credit unions that the coaches visited ranged from a hundred members and two staff members to thousands of members and a team of thirty employees. The issues that the credit unions face are even more varying. Some credit unions have delinquency rates that are absolutely crippling where others have significant problems with conflict of interest. The coaches spent days sitting down with the credit union managers and board members, hearing their successes and their challenges and then returned the next day to provide them with a written report, detailing their challenges and recommendations to address their challenges. Some coaches left behind draft policies and documentation to help get their staffing issues in line or to properly address new loans.

All of the coaches spent their last day in Ghana at the Credit Union Association office in Accra discussing their work with each other as well as with the CUA staff. Getting to hear about all their experiences and how they advised the Ghanaian credit unions to build and develop on their strengths and address their weaknesses in a positive manner was a really interesting experience. The goal of the CCA coaching program is to help the Ghanaian credit union movement move towards independence. Hopefully someday soon Ghana will be sending their credit union practitioners to other countries to share what they have learned from their own experiences in developing a sustainable successful credit union sector."

 

-Joel