@International @Sion @chris @seanfarmelo @Yuliy
Dear comrades at workers.coop,
My name is Wesley Wagumba. I am writing to you from Nairobi, Kenya, where I am building the Umoja Cooperative Movement; a worker-centered network of democratically owned enterprises rooted in the principle that economic life should be governed by those who create its value.
Umoja takes its name from the Swahili word for unity. We are developing an integrated ecosystem of production, consumer, and welfare cooperatives, drawing on the frameworks of Mondragon and Marinaleda and grounding them in Kenya’s urban and regional realities. Each enterprise in the movement is owned and managed by its worker-members, who vote on decisions, share in surpluses, and hold leadership accountable. Capital is treated as a tool, not a source of control.
I have followed workers.coop’s work with genuine interest, particularly your commitment to building worker cooperation as a movement rather than a collection of isolated enterprises. That federated logic is precisely what we are trying to construct in East Africa, and it is rare to find an organisation that has thought about it as carefully as yours has.
I am reaching out to introduce ourselves and to explore whether there is scope for a relationship between our movements, whether through knowledge exchange, mentorship, or simply the kind of cross-movement solidarity that sustains all of us in this work. We are at an early stage and are not necessarily asking for anything big like resources. Conversation would be good for a start.
I would welcome the opportunity to connect at your convenience. Attached to this are two documents. One that goes into detail on how our organisation works. The other is an example of one of our worker cooperatives so that you can get a feeling of how our Enterprises are and operate. This one deals with coffee.
In solidarity,
Wesley Wagumba,
Coordinator, Umoja Cooperative Movement.
Nairobi, Kenya
I have sent them a link to this thread.