By Bisi Bamishe
Oriyon International Limited, a livestock production and aggregation company focused on building structured and traceable livestock value chains, has partnered with Leadway Assurance, one of Nigeria’s leading insurance providers and a member of the Leadway Group, to launch the Economic Empowerment of Women and Youth in Livestock Agriculture (EEWYLA) training programme at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Oyo State.
The programme, which formally commenced on 17 August 2026, brings together women and young livestock producers for structured training, cooperative development and greater access to formal financial and market systems. Leadway Assurance is the programme’s insurance partner, providing the risk protection component designed to help participating producers protect livestock assets and reduce the financial impact of unforeseen losses.
The initiative aligns with a broader national effort to modernise Nigeria’s livestock economy. The Federal Government’s National Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy targets an increase in the sector’s contribution to the economy from approximately US$32 billion to at least US$74 billion by 2035, with finance, data management, animal health, infrastructure, and women and youth participation among the areas identified for intervention.
Speaking at the launch, Oluwafumilayo Amina Momoh-Orimoloye, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Oriyon International Limited, said the programme was built around the need to ensure that livestock producers, particularly women and young people, are not excluded from the opportunities emerging within a more formal and technology-enabled livestock sector.
“There is enormous productive capacity among women and young livestock farmers, but many still operate without the structures, records, market connections and institutional support that can help them grow. EEWYLA is about changing that. We are bringing producers together, improving their technical and business capabilities and creating a pathway that connects what happens on the farm to finance, insurance, technology and ultimately the market. Our partnership with Leadway also reflects our belief that sustainable growth in livestock agribusiness must be matched with the right protection. As we equip producers with training, traceability, financial literacy and market access, it is equally important that they are able to manage the risks that could threaten that progress. Bringing insurance into the programme helps create a stronger foundation for participants to build business resilience, and recover quickly from financial shocks”
EEWYLA is designed to organise individual smallholder livestock producers into structured cooperative clusters while equipping them with knowledge in livestock production and breeding, cooperative governance, financial and digital literacy. The programme is being implemented within a broader ecosystem involving Oriyon International Limited, which coordinates physical livestock production, aggregation and farm–level implementation, and Rumer Technologies Limited, which provides the digital infrastructure for producer and livestock identification, traceability and transaction records.
Fatona Ayoola, Global Head, Agricultural Risk Solutions at Leadway Assurance, said the combination of producer education, formal organisation and better data can help create a more sustainable foundation for livestock insurance.
“Insurance becomes more effective when there is better visibility around the asset being protected. Bringing producers into structured cooperatives, improving livestock management practices and creating verifiable records around animal health, ownership and movement can strengthen both risk assessment and claims management. Our engagement with EEWYLA is therefore not simply about providing an insurance product. It was about helping participants understand that protecting an agribusiness should be part of building it. As these producers improve their skills and expand their operations, we want them to be better positioned to absorb shocks, recover and continue producing.”
For Leadway, the increasing availability of verified livestock and producer records presents an opportunity to strengthen the way risks are understood and managed within a segment of agriculture that has historically been difficult to insure at scale.
About Leadway Assurance
Leadway Assurance is one of Nigeria’s foremost non-banking financial services groups, offering diversified solutions across insurance, pensions, health, and asset management. Founded in 1970, the company has built a legacy of trust and innovation, serving millions of individuals and businesses across Nigeria and West Africa.
About Oriyon International Limited
Oriyon International Limited is the physical production and aggregation arm of an integrated agribusiness ecosystem building Nigeria’s first end-to-end, digitally traceable halal livestock value chain — from small holder producer to processed, export compliant product. Oriyon’s mandate is production and aggregation: goat and small-ruminant ranching, cooperative-based supply consolidation, and the development of mechanised, AAA-classified halal processing infrastructure. Its digital arm, Rumer Technologies Limited (“Rumer”), supplies the trust, traceability and payments layer that makes every animal, transaction and product batch verifiable from farm gate to end consumer.
