The One Kindred, One Business Initiative (ÓKÓBÌ), is a community-based business initiative where a kindred of Imo State’s 665 communities owns at least one business enterprise, from crop farming, livestock, fishery, food processing, to trading, aimed to particularly drive socio-economic growth and transformation across the communities.
ÓKÓBÌ began from ground zero in 2023 as an initiative of Imo government under Governor Hope Uzodinma, and promoted by office of the chief economic adviser to the governor. It is a community-driven microeconomic model and movement pioneered in the state, and scalable nationally. It aims to galvanise the various communities (kindreds) in the state to dream up at least one business initiative, and groom it to maturity. Today, the initiative holds over 600 thriving businesses and 20,000+ members.
ÓKÓBÌ encourages small, tight-knit communities, families, and social groups to pool resources and build sustainable, jointly owned businesses rather than operating as individual micro-entrepreneurs. As an economic development initiative within the shared prosperity agenda of the Imo government. It is a model that exemplifies the collaborations of three or more individuals pooling resources to establish a lucrative, sustainable, and profitable business venture. The primary objective is to empower grassroots communities, fostering employment and wealth creation through well-structured cooperative enterprises across Imo State.
Today, with 600 businesses and more than 20,000 membership strength, findings indicate that there are still more grounds to cover from Imo’s 665 autonomous communities in 27 local government areas.
Beneficiaries are into businesses such as agriculture: crop farming, livestock, fishery, piggery, snail and goat rearing, food processing, retail trade, distribution, among others. Some others are into growing hybrid fruit trees such as dwarf pawpaw, coconut, oil palm, avocado, plantain. For example, Innocent Dike, one of Okobi partners, deals on nursing, sale and supply of hybrid seedlings and suckers of different kinds of crops: elephant species plantain, pineapple, soursop, guava. His supergene oil palm trees grow and mature in under-two years.
In Aboh Mbaise, Assumpta Tochi leads 32 other women in their Women Initiative and Agricultural Cooperative where they engage in cassava production, poultry with some 150 birds, and fish farm. It is the same with Ijeoma Nwachukwu’s Famers Unit 6 Multipurpose Cooperative who are doing cassava processing. At the Great Minds Cooperative in Umunoha, Mbaitoli local government area, Joseph Emeribe and his team are into production of paint. While James Okpe and team engage in ICT/media. Flourish Mushroom Farms led by Mariana Ndukwe engage in mushroom planting and production. Same with Nwadimma Victor, Ngor/Okpala Elite Farmers Multipurpose Cooperative led by Matthias Dozie-Ekwugha which are into rice processing and distribution, among many others.
Kenneth Amaeshi, chief economic adviser to Imo State Government and OKOBI promoter, is a professor at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, where he is a global expert in applying sustainability thinking to finance, strategy, and economic development, with a deep knowledge of Africa.
He told Business A.M. that the “initiative is proving that when communities come together, progress follows.”
Amaeshi is also a global expert in sustainable finance and economic development, whose work bridges academia, policy, and business, influencing global conversations on sustainability and Africa’s economic transformation.
His involvement with the business initiative helped secure funding from IHS Holdings, which provided grants of N1 million and N2 million to each of the beneficiaries. This, the beneficiaries confirmed to our correspondent. However, they complained that their businesses are being heavily affected by the current precarious socio-economic situation in the country.
OKOBI has attracted two international outfits, Calpe Partners USA and Africa Business Affairs (AfriBA), which have expressed willingness to partner with the Imo government under the microenterprise growth platform.
If the deal works out, OKOBI would benefit over 1,000 micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs), projected to achieve over N600 billion in economic impact by 2028.
The platform would accelerate a 16-week system blending pooled community capital, shared services, AI-enabled enterprise tracking, and a wide portfolio of business management support, designed to transform MSMEs into scalable, investable businesses in the state.
FG adopts scheme to tackle unemployment
Having gained traction, the federal government has approved the Imo local business scheme as a “strategy to tackle unemployment and boost the country’s economy”. Vice President Kashim Shettima said this when he launched an OKOBI students’ club at Claretian University of Nigeria, Maryland, Nekede near Owerri, the Imo State capital. Shettima emphasised that entrepreneurship has become a necessity in the country rather than a mere option for the teeming youth population. Modalities on how to scale up the community business initiative at a national level are yet to be unveiled.
Funding issues be built in
Nwaodu Lawrence, a development economist, said at a debate forum on the OKOBI initiative, criticised the model for its lack of funding. “Funding is important to starting and scaling the business. I don’t mean accessing the regular funding from the banks.
“What I am talking about is a special funding for these businesses arranged by the management, either from offshore contacts or from sources down here, which would come easy and cheap. The structure is critical, but that can easily be handled”.
