Riby Cooperative Conference 1.0.: Strengthening Cooperatives To Provide Life’s Basic Needs
On the 22nd of May, 2018, Riby organized its inaugural Cooperative Conference, a gathering of over 200 people involved in the Cooperative Ecosystem.
The attendees included leaders and executives from both formal and informal cooperatives, the formal banking sector, development finance institutions, telecommunications, financial technology companies and much more.
The importance of a symposium like the Riby Cooperative Conference comes to light when one considers the importance of cooperatives and credit unions in the African economy, a fact established by Riby’s Chief Operations Officer, Tosin Oluwaleye in his opening remarks.
The event’s theme was “Strengthening Cooperatives To Provide Life’s Basic Needs.” These basic needs are primarily feeding and shelter, so the conversation began on how groups could create more wealth for themselves and their members.
The Executive Secretary of the Cooperative Financing Agency of Nigeria, Mr. Emmanuel Atama gave the initial keynote speech. Mr. Atama brought with him a wealth of information from collaborative projects with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the World Bank. In his speech, he broke down how cooperatives could get access to funds and other ways that they could invest their member contributions.
One of the biggest enforcers of trade unions has been the Bank Of Industry, who have given out millions of dollars in loans to market clusters through the MarketMoni segment of the Government Enterprise & Empowerment Program.
Eniola Akinsete, the Senior Manager, Micro Enterprise at the Bank of Industry, gave a speech about the Development Finance Institution’s impact in empowering cooperatives and their key learnings.
Other speakers at the Riby Cooperative Conference included the Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Nigeria, Lynda Saint-Nwafor and the Chief Executive Officer of Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA), Esaie Diei.
To achieve its goals of creating an avenue for industry leaders to discuss and formulate plans, the Riby Cooperative Conference featured two panels.
The leading panel, named after the Conference’s theme, was moderated by BusinessDay senior associate, Lehlé Balde. The panel featured the Bank of Industry’s Mrs Akinsete, Sterling Bank’s Head of Microbanking, Opeyemi Oke, Total E&P Cooperative’s Henry Hector-Amiwero, CFAO Cooperative’s Yinka Ogunnubi, Cooperative Rating and Awards Society president Victor Oyegoke, and the Group Executive Director of Cognity Advisory, Olusiji Aina.
The second panel was themed, “Improving payments and access to financial services to foster financial inclusion.” It was moderated by Business Insider SSA’s David Adeleke, with the Chief Executive of Social Lender, Faith Adesomowo and the CRC Credit Bureau’s Peggy Chukwuma-Nwosu on the panel.
The event proved to be a very insightful one, and we’re so excited for next year’s conference already! Looking forward to seeing you all!
You can watch the entire Conference below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCZLfkhqIOg&feature=youtu.be
