News from the Institute

A new collection of ICDE reports examines cooperative AI, policy, public digital infrastructure, platform cooperatives, care, labor, fisheries, health, and data governance across India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Turkey, the UK, Spain, France, and Brazil.

Featured Report:
Brazil’s Platform Cooperativism Paradox: State Recognition Without State Policy
This ICDE report analyzes public policies regarding platform cooperatives and the digital solidarity economy in Brazil during the Lula administration and presents an action plan to advance the consolidation of worker-led platforms as more efficient, fair, and democratic alternatives to Big Tech. Read the full report in English and Portuguese.

Published May 1, 2026:
Digital Platforms for Small-Scale Fishing Cooperatives
How platform tools can help fishing co-ops access investment by producing shared data, reducing risk, and organizing finance at the ecosystem level rather than the individual firm. Get the report.

Cooperative Data Centers: Lessons from GAD eG
A close look at how cooperative ownership of data centers can shift power in the AI economy and why these models are hard to sustain under pressure to scale. Access the report.

Trustworthy AI Governance in Cooperatives
A governance model for AI rooted in cooperative institutions, linking technical systems to democratic oversight, member participation, and accountability. Read the analysis.

Worker-Platform Cooperatives in Kenya’s Ride-Hailing Sector
An analysis of Kenya’s regulatory landscape, outlining what’s missing for driver-owned platforms to take hold: legal clarity, financing, and coordinated policy support. Explore the report.

Solidarity Gaps: French Nannies and Platform Work
An account of how care platforms disrupt informal support networks, and why nannies are exploring cooperative alternatives to rebuild trust and control. Click here.

Sex Work, Autonomy, and Cooperative Refusal
A study of how sex workers use cooperative platforms and mutual aid to push back against extraction, surveillance, and platform dependency. Learn from this report.

Co-Designing a Health Services Cooperative in Mexico
A proposal for a multi-stakeholder health cooperative shaped with physicians in Monterrey, addressing gaps between public and private care while using digital tools to support—not dominate—clinical practice. Find out more about these topics.

Blockchain Governance for Digital Commons and Platform Cooperatives
An argument that blockchain tools can support democratic governance—but only when shaped by cooperative principles rather than technical design alone. Follow up and read this ICDE report.

Ecosystems of Fragility
Why platform cooperatives are difficult to build in fragile contexts such as refugee settings, where legal instability, lack of capital, and weak infrastructure limit collective ownership. Read here.

Farming Alone? Digital Platforms and Mechanization in Africa
A critique of “Uber for tractors” models, showing how platform design often overlooks the collective realities of smallholder farming. Dig in.

The Double Bind of Public Delivery Platforms
Why state-run platforms struggle to compete: they must move fast like startups while operating under public constraints that slow them down. Learn more.

When the State Goes Digital
A comparison of public and cooperative platforms across India, Brazil, and Brazil, showing that outcomes hinge on governance, infrastructure, and market position—not state involvement alone. Download and read.

Thought Pieces

Toward Worker-owned Delivery Platforms with the OpenCourier Protocol
The OpenCourier protocol opens up opportunities for delivery workers to own the platforms that manage their livelihoods. We introduce the protocol, welcoming contributors and comments. Read it here.

Designing Economic Belonging for International Families in Aalborg
The essay shows how design tools, care practices, and community spaces can help international families understand cooperatives and begin forming collective initiatives. Find out more.

Cooperative Interventions in the AI Stack
This piece argues that cooperatives should engage AI not as a single technology to adopt or reject, but as an infrastructure stack whose ownership, governance, funding, and values can be reshaped through cooperative intervention. Here.

Fellowship

Learn about the work of the 2026/2027 ICDE fellows. Or read their individual introductions or bios.

Recent Events

Making Sense of AI with the Cooperative Movement is an event series that helps cooperative leaders and students understand AI beyond the hype, focusing on governance, ownership, labor, and values-aligned use. Learn more about it here and see the documentation here.
AI for Cooperatives – Risks, Dependencies and Ethical Limits,, The Commons and Open Co-operativism, and Cooperative Digital Infrastructure & Data Centers.

Upcoming PCC Conference
The Solidarity AI conference brings together global practitioners and researchers to explore how AI can be designed and governed through cooperative, community-led infrastructures rooted in justice, care, and local values. Read about it here.
Call for contributions. Bangkok November 12-15.