Kaifan, 1962: residents pooled 4,260 dinars so they would not have to shop in town

In the early 1960s the residents of Kaifan, as the chairman of its co-operative, Yousef Al-Aidan, told the Kuwait News Agency, had to travel to the market in Kuwait City for everyday shopping. Their answer was simple: a market in the district itself, owned by the people who lived there.

A meeting in a school

On 10 October 1961 the men of the area met at the Al-Khalil bin Ahmad boys’ school to agree on practical steps. They worked through what the Department of Social Affairs and Labour required before a formal application could be filed. At first, Al-Aidan said, the idea was simply a shopping market funded by residents.

Registration

On 11 November 1962 the society’s registration was published in the official gazette, Kuwait Al-Youm, making it the first co-operative in Kuwait registered under Law No. 20 of 1962. Its capital was 4,260 dinars, split into 2,840 shares, every one of them taken up, which works out at one and a half dinars a share.

Thirteen days later, on 24 November 1962, the first board was elected under the supervision of the Ministry of Social Affairs. It started from nothing: hire an administration, study what goods the neighbourhood needed, and plan what came next.

What survives of the idea

The model set in Kaifan is the one Kuwait’s co-operatives still run on. Shareholders live in the district, they elect the board, and the central market sits in the middle of the neighbourhood. What began in 1962 as a stake held by one district’s residents became the market every district now expects.

Photo: crates of oranges and lemons at a produce market, an illustration and not the Kaifan co-op. By Retired electrician, public domain (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) interview with Kaifan Co-operative Society chairman Yousef Al-Aidan on its 60th anniversary, 10 November 2022 (kuna.net.kw/articledetails.aspx?id=3067210), read on 14 October 2026.