Riby pushes for stronger cooperatives in first confab

Financial tech firm, Riby, recently held its inaugural cooperative conference, tagged Coop 1.0. The event was a meeting point for all sectors of the economy involved in the cooperative ecosystem to come and discuss different ways that the cooperative model could be improved to provide basic life needs, like food and shelter. Over 100 cooperative administrators were present at the event.

Speakers included senior manager, Enterprise at the Bank of Industry (BOI), Eniola Akinsete, executive secretary of the Cooperative Financing Agency of Nigeria, Emmanuel Atama, and Sterling Bank’s head of microbanking, Opeyemi Oke.

The BOI empowers these groups through its Social Intervention programmes and Akinsete revealed in her presentation that some of the things they had learnt included the power of numbers in these groups and that technology like Riby’s Co Banking platform was

also important for empowering cooperatives.

With the audience taken on a journey through the importance of cooperatives, cooperative bosses like Henry Hector-amiwero of the Total E& P Cooperative and Yinka Ogunnubi of the CFAO Cooperative shared their valuable experience of how they had been able to generate wealth and how other cooperatives could emulate them.

With financial education a key part of the process of empowering cooperatives, members of the media including BusinessDay senior associate, Lehlé Balde, and Business Insider editor, David Adeleke, were also present as moderators for the event.

The conference also shed light on financial inclusion, with the CEO of Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access, Esaie Diei, the head of Business Development at CRC Credit Bureau, Peggy Chukwuma-nwosu, and the CEO of Social Lender, Faith Adesemowo, all spoke at the event.