From 9 to 20 December 2019, the ILO and the International Training Centre of the ILO (ITC-ILO) organized the “Rural Development Academy: The Future of Work in Rural Economies”. The Academy focused on the need for decent and sustainable jobs in the rural economy. It also emphasized the need for making rural areas more attractive to youth. The Academy brought together 100 participants from among ILO’s tripartite constituents, policy makers involved in rural development, practitioners from development partner agencies and international organizations, social innovators and entrepreneurs, members from academia and civil society organizations.

In the framework of the Rural Academy, an elective course on “Rural Development through Cooperatives” was co-organized by Agriterra and the ILO’s Cooperatives Unit. Different topics were presented and discussed over the course of three days, including the cooperative basics and principles, the role of cooperatives in the rural economy, and practical cases from Jordanian cooperatives working with Syrian refugees and the Mondragon cooperative ecosystem. The 35 participants to the elective came from Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Ghana, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mexico, South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia.