Developing a Performance Monitoring Framework for Agricultural Cooperative Societies in North West Nigeria

Agricultural cooperative societies in North West Nigeria are largely without standardised performance monitoring tools, making it difficult for state regulatory agencies, funders, and cooperative leaders to assess organisational health and design targeted interventions. This study developed a practical performance monitoring framework for agricultural cooperative societies in the North West geopolitical zone, drawing on Kano, Kaduna, and Sokoto States as pilot contexts. A sequential mixed-methods programme development approach was adopted, comprising a situational analysis of current performance tracking practices, stakeholder consultations, and framework validation. The situational analysis involved structured interviews with 35 cooperative officers, ten state cooperative department officials, and five agricultural finance specialists. Stakeholder consultations employed participatory mapping exercises to identify the most important performance dimensions for local agricultural cooperative contexts. The validated framework encompasses five performance domains: financial sustainability, member service delivery, governance quality, agricultural productivity support, and cooperative education impact. Each domain includes measurable indicators, data collection tools, and benchmark scores derived from regional cooperative performance data. The framework was subjected to a two-round Delphi expert validation process involving fourteen cooperative management and agricultural economics experts, achieving consensus on 91.3 percent of proposed indicators. The study recommends adoption of the framework by the North West Cooperative Federation as a standard annual performance review tool, with the results used to inform state government support allocation and capacity building targeting for underperforming cooperatives.

Keywords: performance monitoring, agricultural cooperatives, North West Nigeria, cooperative development, Delphi method