President's Office Labour Economic Affairs and Investment Pemba Head Office2024-10-182024-10-182024https://zarip.planningznz.go.tz/handle/123456789/177This paper explains various issues relating to Cooperative Societies in Zanzibar. By definition, Cooperative Societies are associations or organizations that are formed by people of common interest who voluntarily come together and pool resources to promote their welfare. These can be in a form of a primary societies, secondary societies, apexes, and/or federations. Main issues explained to this report includes, cooperatives social economic status in urban areas where survey done in Chake-Chake and Mkoani District shehias in Pemba island.The Cooperatives Social and Economic Role in Urban Areas Survey (2024) conducted by a team of POLEI. The survey aimed to assess Cooperatives social and economic role in urban areas of Chake-Chake and Mkoani District. Descriptive and quantitative methods were used to analyze the data. A random sampling technique was used to select 55 Cooperatives from 6 urban Shehias in Chake-Chake and Mkoani Districts. Cooperatives interviewed using a structured and unstructured questionnaire. The results found that, Most of Cooperatives involved in trade as well as manufacturing and processing activities. Cooperativesn in urban area have an average of 10 members and create employments to 15 peoples per Cooperative. When study finds the sources of capital for MSMEs grasp the member contribution and Empowerment Fund are the main sources of capital. Cooperatives in urban area has profitability ratio off 22 percent where these were statistical significant at α=5% (p<0.05). Furthermore, survey finds the challenges facing Cooperative Societies in urban area and found that knowledge on climatic change, financial literacy, capital and marketing are main problems.