Under the agreement, FORUS is appointed DotCooperation’s Strategic Promotional and Implementation Partner for Africa. The collaboration combines DotCooperation’s cooperative digital identity ecosystem with FORUS’s cooperative network, implementation capability and technical support services.
A trusted digital home for cooperatives
The .coop domain gives eligible cooperatives a recognisable digital identity and a dedicated online presence connected to the global cooperative movement. Through the partnership, FORUS will help cooperatives, federations, apex organisations and cooperative networks understand, access and use .coop as part of their digital development.
The partnership will focus on practical adoption, not digital identity in isolation. Activities may include cooperative outreach, awareness campaigns, webinars, conferences, onboarding support, technical assistance, digital-service integration, case studies and promotion through cooperative platforms including WorldMap.coop and Stories.coop.
From identity to participation
FORUS’s approach is to connect trusted cooperative identity with practical digital participation. Depending on the needs of each cooperative and the relevant approvals, this may include member and organisation onboarding, payments, commerce, procurement, service access and connections between cooperative economies.
The partnership creates a pathway from identity to trust, connection, participation and growth. The objective is to help African cooperatives become more visible, easier to discover and better positioned to participate in the digital economy while retaining their own ownership, governance and member relationships.
Built around real cooperative economies
FORUS is applying this approach through sector-focused cooperative use cases that show how shared digital infrastructure can strengthen real, member-owned economic networks.
FORUS’s strategic collaboration with the World Agriculture Forum (WAF) supports TerraNexus, a cooperative-led agricultural ecosystem designed to connect national apex and tertiary agricultural cooperatives, their primary cooperatives and farmer members to markets, finance, technology, services and investment. WAF contributes its global agricultural network and Country Councils, while FORUS provides cooperative enablement, verified identity, connected workflows and financial rails.
FORUS is developing a pilot programme with Unati in India. Based in Punjab, the Unati Co-operative Marketing-cum-Processing Society Ltd. connects rural communities and producers with agriculture, processing, value addition, technology and markets. Unati shows how cooperative structures can support women-led enterprise, rural livelihoods and digitally enabled value chains.
WOW (Wealth on Wheels), South Africa. WOW-Connect is a cooperative-led digital transformation initiative developed for the Eastern Cape Transport Tertiary Co-operative (ECTTC), the largest public transport co-operative in Africa and winner of the Fintech Innovation of the Year Award (Africa Tech Festival 2024). WOW-Connect is transforming the public transport economy by integrating membership, digital identity, payments, connectivity, mobility, fleet operations, and commercial and financial services into a single digital ecosystem.
These initiatives form part of FORUS’s wider strategy to connect cooperative economies through practical, locally governed digital infrastructure.
The cooperative economy already exists. The next step is to connect it.
About DotCooperation
DotCooperation LLC supports the digital identity and visibility of the global cooperative movement through the .coop domain and related cooperative identity services. The .coop domain is available to eligible cooperative organisations and enterprises subject to the applicable eligibility requirements.