Sofora Cooperative Credit Union is a community base Credit Union which started as a study group in the year 2006 with a total membership of sixty (60) people. “Sofora” which implies togetherness in Jola language was born on the premises of helping each other to surmount their financial challenges. The idea of Sofora forming the Credit Union was born out of two founding members who are involved in business activity. These were members who had big ambitions to expand their businesses, but finance was their biggest problem at the time and visited the only adviser and Male member of the kafo to ask for financial assistant. In this regard, they were given the assistant, but he also proposed a long-term solution to solve their problems for eternality. Therefore, the idea of establishing the Credit Union emerged.

Since 2006 to August 2011 Sofora became a (Study Group) a term used to describe newly formed Credit Unions under active supervision from the National Association of the Cooperative Credit Union of the Gambia (NACCUG) before registration. It took about five years before Sofora could graduate from a study group and register as the Credit Union mainly due to a lack of dedicated and committed members to manage the Credit Union effectively. Additionally, it was challenging to meet the required set standard by NACCUG as it was operated inside a room and on a mobile banking manner and not in an office with facilities. These factors are some of the reason why it took so long to graduate from a study group to a fully registered member of NACCUG.

Furthermore, Sofora Cooperative Credit Union was made a full-fledged Credit Union on the 8th of September 2011 under the address of Bundung Six Junction, Kanifing Municipality. Sofora was also running a manual system for the same period until it finally secures licensed software from NACCUG to use for its Member’s saving and Loans. Sofora Cooperative Credit Union has a size able office on rent and a permanent employee.