Women and young livestock producers are set to benefit from a new training initiative aimed at improving their access to insurance, finance and formal markets as Oriyon International Limited partners Leadway Assurance to launch the Economic Empowerment of Women and Youth in Livestock Agriculture (EEWYLA) programme.
The initiative, which formally commenced on 17 August 2026 at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, Oyo State, is designed to equip participants with technical and business skills while organising them into structured cooperative clusters.
Leadway Assurance, a member of the Leadway Group, is providing the insurance component of the programme, with the aim of helping participating producers protect their livestock assets and reduce the financial impact of unforeseen losses.
The partnership comes amid efforts to modernise Nigeria’s livestock economy and expand its contribution to national development. The Federal Government’s National Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy targets an increase in the sector’s contribution from approximately US$32 billion to at least US$74 billion by 2035.
The strategy identifies finance, data management, animal health, infrastructure, and greater participation by women and youth as key areas for intervention.
Speaking at the launch, Oluwafumilayo Amina Momoh-Orimoloye, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Oriyon International Limited, said EEWYLA was designed to ensure that women and young livestock farmers could participate in the opportunities emerging from a more formal and technology-enabled 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,” she said.
Momoh-Orimoloye said the programme would connect farm-level activities to finance, insurance, technology and markets through training, traceability, financial literacy and cooperative development.
She added that the partnership with Leadway reflected the need to combine business development with risk protection, enabling producers to build resilience and recover from financial shocks.
EEWYLA will provide training in livestock production and breeding, cooperative governance, financial literacy and digital literacy, while helping smallholder producers organise into structured cooperative clusters.
The programme is being implemented through a broader ecosystem involving Oriyon International Limited, which coordinates livestock production, aggregation and farm-level implementation, and Rumer Technologies Limited, which provides digital infrastructure for producer and livestock identification, traceability and transaction records.
Fatona Ayoola, Global Head, Agricultural Risk Solutions at Leadway Assurance, said better producer organisation and verifiable livestock records could improve the effectiveness of insurance within the agricultural sector.
“Insurance becomes more effective when there is better visibility around the asset being protected,” Ayoola said.
She explained that structured cooperatives, improved livestock management practices and verifiable records on animal health, ownership and movement could strengthen risk assessment and claims management.
According to her, Leadway’s engagement with EEWYLA goes beyond providing an insurance product to helping participants understand that risk protection should be part of building a sustainable agribusiness.
She said the increasing availability of verified livestock and producer records could also help strengthen the way risks are understood and managed in a segment of agriculture that has historically been difficult to insure at scale.
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