Hidden Hands, Hidden Harvests: How Intra-Household Secrecy Drives Cooperative Leakage in Tanzania

Abstract

Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies (AMCOS) are vital for integrating smallholders into global value chains, yet they persistently suffer from side-selling (leakage) that undermines their economic viability. Conventional governance models typically attribute leakage to external market prices or weak enforcement, overlooking the household as a critical site of economic contestation. This “institutional blind spot” ignores how domestic power asymmetries and liquidity constraints shape compliance. Drawing on intra-household bargaining and collective action theories, this study utilizes qualitative data from Focus Group Discussions, life histories, and Key Informant Interviews in Tanzania’s Muleba and Karagwe districts to open the “black box” of household decision-making. The analysis reveals that leakage is driven by “hidden hands”: men conceal cooperative income to preserve authority, while women covertly divert specific grades of coffee to informal buyers to secure immediate liquidity for household survival. This secrecy generates a “dual channel” market where high-quality coffee is delivered to AMCOS, while “rejects” and pre-harvest volumes flow into informal “butura” trade (pre-harvest selling). These behaviours are not merely acts of deviance but rational adaptations to a “moral economy of necessity,” where immediate cash needs override abstract cooperative rules. The study demonstrates that meso-level governance failures are rooted in micro-level domestic mistrust. To ensure sustainability, cooperative policy must shift from punitive enforcement to “household-centered governance,” incorporating gender-responsive auditing and liquidity-sensitive payment mechanisms that align institutional goals with the lived realities of members.