When does the 6th International Conference take place?

The conference is scheduled to run from early September to early September, as indicated by the start and end dates.

Where is the 6th International Conference being held?

The conference will be held in Moshi, TZA, according to the location details.

What is the currency for any associated fees?

Any associated fees for the conference are denominated in USD, as specified in the fees section.

6th International Conference 2026

Name: 6th International Conference 2026
Start: 2026-09-02T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-04T00:00:00Z
Location: Moshi

Sep 2–4, 2026Moshi, TanzaniaIn-person

Starts in 25 daysRegistration open

The 6th International Conference is scheduled to take place in Moshi, Tanzania. This event serves as a platform for international discourse and collaboration, bringing together participants from diverse backgrounds to engage in discussions on various global issues. Its location in Moshi, Tanzania, highlights a focus on regional perspectives within a broader international context. The conference aims to foster intellectual exchange and the development of actionable insights. Participants will have the opportunity to present research, share experiences, and network with peers, contributing to a collective understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the global community.

Committees & topics

Topics
Inclusive Cooperatives: Expanding Access and Representation · Cooperatives and Technology: Digital Transformation of Member-Owned Enterprise · Cooperative Identity and Regional/Global Cooperation · Cooperative Resilience and Transformation in a Polycrisis Era · Cooperative Governance and Leadership · Cooperatives and Emerging Sectors

Why it matters

This conference is significant because it convenes a global audience in TZA, a country that plays a crucial role in regional development and international relations. The gathering in Moshi underscores the importance of local contexts in addressing global challenges, providing a unique vantage point for discussions that often center on more established international hubs.

The event's international scope means that it will likely attract a wide array of perspectives, enriching the dialogue and promoting a more comprehensive understanding of complex issues. Such diverse participation is essential for developing robust and inclusive solutions that are relevant across different cultural and political landscapes.

Furthermore, the conference provides an opportunity for participants to engage with the specific dynamics of the African continent, particularly from the perspective of TZA. This focus can lead to a deeper appreciation of the region's contributions to global thought and policy, moving beyond generalized narratives to explore nuanced realities.

Ultimately, the conference's ability to facilitate cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue makes it a vital forum for advancing knowledge and fostering international cooperation. The insights generated here can inform policy, inspire further research, and strengthen networks among professionals dedicated to addressing pressing global concerns.

How to prepare

To prepare effectively for this international conference, participants should consider familiarizing themselves with the geopolitical and socioeconomic landscape of TZA. Understanding the local context will enhance one's ability to contribute meaningfully to discussions and appreciate the diverse perspectives presented.

Given the international nature of the event, it is advisable to review current global trends and key issues in international relations. This broad understanding will enable participants to connect their specific areas of expertise to the wider themes of the conference, fostering more impactful engagement.

Participants should also consider how their own national or regional perspectives might intersect with those of other attendees. Reflecting on potential areas of collaboration or divergence can help in formulating constructive contributions and engaging in productive dialogue. This approach aligns with principles of effective diplomacy and cross-cultural communication.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Tanzania

Host nation, providing a crucial regional perspective and platform for international dialogue.

Role in topic

As the host country, TZA offers a unique lens through which to view global challenges, particularly those affecting the African continent. Its role is central to grounding theoretical discussions in practical, regional realities.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Inclusive Cooperatives: Expanding Access and Representation

The cooperative movement traces its modern origins to the 1844 Rochdale Pioneers in England, whose principles of open and voluntary membership established inclusion as a foundational tenet. Over the twentieth century, cooperatives spread across agriculture, finance, housing, and consumer sectors, often emerging where markets or states failed to serve marginalized populations — rural smallholders, women excluded from formal credit, Indigenous communities, and migrant workers. The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), founded in 1895, formalized these inclusion norms in its 1995 Statement on the Cooperative Identity. Despite the principle of open membership, structural barriers persist. Women remain underrepresented in cooperative leadership in much of the world, youth participation has declined as agricultural cooperatives age, and persons with disabilities, refugees, and informal-sector workers often lack access to membership capital or legal recognition. The UN's 2012 International Year of Cooperatives and the ongoing 2025 IYC2025 process have highlighted these gaps, with the ILO's Recommendation 193 (2002) urging governments to remove discriminatory legal barriers. Today the debate centers on how cooperatives can deliberately design for inclusion — through gender quotas on boards, youth apprenticeship schemes, accessible digital onboarding, and platform cooperatives that organize gig and informal workers. Tensions exist between member sovereignty (one member, one vote) and affirmative measures, and between national cooperative laws that still restrict membership by nationality, literacy, or capital contribution.

Key players

Cooperatives and Technology: Digital Transformation of Member-Owned Enterprise

Cooperatives have historically adopted technology to level competitive asymmetries — from shared grain elevators in nineteenth-century North America to credit-union core banking systems in the late twentieth century. The digital era, however, presents both opportunity and existential pressure. Platform capitalism has concentrated value capture in shareholder-owned intermediaries (ride-hailing, delivery, short-term rentals), often at the expense of the workers and small producers cooperatives traditionally organized. In response, the 'platform cooperativism' movement, catalyzed by scholars and practitioners at The New School from 2014 onward, has promoted member-owned digital platforms. Established cooperatives are simultaneously investing in shared digital infrastructure: agricultural cooperatives deploy satellite and IoT tools for precision farming; cooperative banks build joint fintech stacks to compete with neobanks; consumer cooperatives invest in e-commerce. The ICA and ILO have flagged the digital divide as a strategic risk, particularly for small cooperatives in the Global South. Current debates address data governance (who owns member and producer data?), interoperability of cooperative platforms across borders, the use of AI in credit scoring within SACCOs and credit unions, and whether decentralized technologies such as DAOs constitute genuine cooperatives under ICA principles. Regulatory uncertainty around platform workers and cross-border digital cooperatives remains unresolved.

Key players

Cooperative Identity and Regional/Global Cooperation

The cooperative identity — defined by the ICA's 1995 Statement, comprising the definition, values, and seven principles — is the legal and moral basis distinguishing cooperatives from investor-owned firms, mutuals, and social enterprises. The Statement was reaffirmed and reinterpreted at the ICA's 33rd World Cooperative Congress in Seoul in 2021, which launched a multi-year process to clarify the identity in light of new organizational forms. Globally, cooperatives are recognized in UN GA Resolution 64/136, ILO Recommendation 193, and the 2025 International Year of Cooperatives. Regional architectures vary: the EU has a Statute for a European Cooperative Society (SCE, 2003); Mercosur has its Specialized Meeting on Cooperatives (RECM); ACI-Africa, Cooperatives of the Americas, and ICA Asia-Pacific coordinate regionally. Yet cross-border cooperation remains hampered by incompatible national cooperative laws, tax treatment, and the absence of a global legal instrument. Contemporary debates concern whether the seven principles should be updated to explicitly address environmental sustainability and digital rights, how to police 'cooperative-washing' by firms that adopt the name without the substance, and how cooperatives should position themselves in UN frameworks such as the SDGs and the Pact for the Future. Tensions exist between large federated cooperatives that resemble multinationals and smaller member-driven entities defending strict adherence to the principles.

Key players

Cooperative Resilience and Transformation in a Polycrisis Era

Cooperatives have repeatedly demonstrated counter-cyclical resilience. During the 2008 global financial crisis, cooperative banks generally outperformed investor-owned peers in stability, and credit unions expanded membership. The 2020–2022 COVID-19 pandemic similarly showcased cooperatives' role in maintaining food supply chains, mutual health funds, and worker income through profit-sharing rather than layoffs. The ILO and ICA documented these effects in joint reports framing cooperatives as 'shock absorbers' for member economies. However, cooperatives now confront a compounding polycrisis: climate change disrupting agricultural cooperatives, inflation and interest-rate volatility pressuring cooperative banks, demographic decline thinning membership in rural Europe and East Asia, and geopolitical fragmentation threatening cross-border cooperative trade. The 2025 IYC2025 explicitly frames cooperatives as vehicles for SDG delivery and just transition, particularly in energy (community energy cooperatives), care work, and circular economy sectors. The transformation debate splits between consolidation advocates — who argue that scale and professionalization are necessary for survival — and movement purists, who warn that demutualization and managerialism hollow out the cooperative difference. Recent demutualizations in insurance and banking, alongside the growth of multi-stakeholder and 'next-generation' cooperatives, frame the policy questions before this committee.

Key players

Cooperative Governance and Leadership

Democratic member control — one member, one vote — is the second of the ICA's seven cooperative principles and the structural feature most distinguishing cooperatives from capital-based firms. Yet governance has long been a vulnerability. As cooperatives grow, agency problems emerge between members, elected boards, and professional managers; this 'degeneration thesis' has been debated in cooperative scholarship since the work of Beatrice Webb in the early twentieth century. Famous failures — the demutualization of UK building societies in the 1990s, governance scandals at the Co-operative Bank in 2013, and the collapse of Fonterra's governance reforms — illustrate the stakes. The ICA and ILO Recommendation 193 emphasize good governance, transparency, and member education (the fifth principle). National cooperative laws vary widely on board composition, supervisory bodies, audit requirements, and rules for second-tier federations. Multi-stakeholder cooperatives, common in Italy and Quebec, raise additional questions about how to weight the votes of workers, consumers, and community members. Current debates focus on member engagement in an era of low participation, the role of independent directors, succession planning amid an aging leadership cohort, gender and youth representation on boards, and the appropriate use of digital voting and deliberation tools. The boundary between democratic accountability and managerial efficiency remains the central governance question.

Key players

Cooperatives and Emerging Sectors

Historically concentrated in agriculture, finance, consumer retail, housing, and insurance, the cooperative form is now expanding into sectors that did not exist when the Rochdale principles were drafted. Renewable-energy cooperatives have proliferated in Europe since the 2000s, with REScoop.eu federating community energy projects across the EU. Platform cooperatives organize gig workers in transport, delivery, and creative industries. Care cooperatives — for childcare, eldercare, and home health — are growing rapidly in Japan, Italy, and the United States as public services face fiscal strain and demographic pressure. Other emerging frontiers include data cooperatives (proposed in EU data governance debates), health cooperatives expanding telemedicine, freelancer and creator cooperatives in digital media, and cooperatives in the circular and bioeconomy. The ILO's work on the future of work and the UN's Pact for the Future both reference cooperatives as institutional vehicles for inclusive innovation. The 2025 IYC under the theme 'Cooperatives Build a Better World' explicitly highlights cooperatives in green and digital transitions. Key debates include whether existing cooperative law accommodates these forms or requires reform (especially for cross-border and digital cooperatives), how to finance capital-intensive cooperative ventures without compromising member control, how cooperatives should engage with public procurement and industrial policy in green sectors, and whether 'cooperative' branding by venture-backed startups constitutes appropriation of the identity.

Key players