Cam Dairy Foods Limited is a pastoralist-driven dairy social enterprise that partners with pastoralist communities to guarantee regular supply of dairy-based nutrition to Nigerians. The company’s founder/CEO, Ms. Aisha Bashir, is leading the charge in Nigeria’s quest to transform from a net importer of dairy products to a net producer. Currently working with over 400 pastoralists, with the ambition to reach 600,000 by 2030, Aisha is leaving no stone unturned in her quest to change the narrative: 80 per cent of milk consumed in Nigeria is said to be imported. She shares her inspiring story of catalysing the dairy sector’s success with DANIEL ESSIET

She bestrides Nigeria’s dairy sector like a colossus. From milking to packaging, the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cam Dairy Foods Limited, a pastoralist-driven dairy social enterprise, Ms. Aisha Bashir, manages a premium brand of fresh-drawn milk, working with pastoralists to implement their projects. Cam, which is one of Nigeria’s most-elite private dairy companies, also empowers women and strengthens the skills of dairy farmers to increase their revenue and improve their cattle’s health.

Aisha’s ultimate goal is to establish a social enterprise that fosters innovative solutions for sustainable living and encourage farming communities to address their challenges. And central to her mission is to advance women in the dairy sector. The women farmers are equipped with essential business skills, financial literacy, and food safety knowledge, effectively tackling the unique obstacles they encounter and enabling their businesses to thrive.

Aisha believes that facilitating connections between women agripreneurs and stakeholders, as well as providing marketing support, are crucial factors contributing to their success. This must be why she is dedicated to assisting women vendors in becoming prosperous dairy entrepreneurs through capacity building. She explained why she chose the business: “Cam means milk in the Kanuri language, which is the language of the people of Borno State in Northeastern Nigeria.”

Explaining further why she chose the business, Aisha said ‘Cam’ “pays homage to my own humble beginnings and to the people that raised me and made me who I am today.”

Narrating how it all started, Aisha said: “It was intimidating at first when we would go into the communities. I was one of very few women in a room full of men in very traditional settings. I remember in the early days when we arranged community meetings. I would have to psych myself up in the morning that I am going to face a huge army.

“However, I have to say the reception I received was so open. I received a generous welcome from the men. They have been so receptive to the opportunity that we are bringing to their communities. I was brought up in a way that made me sensitive to traditional practices especially traditional hierarchies with regards to respecting elders, and traditions. I was also very conscious about going to communities and ensuring that we respect their ways of life. That in itself already brought us closer to them.

 “They can see that you’re not coming here to change things. You’re coming here to collaborate and to partner. You’re not assertive. So, I think from that approach we were able to help the men understand that there’s no feminist agenda. What we are doing is to give women jobs to allow the household to earn money. We ensure they are equally compensated for it and remove any sense of competition. Everybody in the household benefits and has a role to play.”

 After successfully scaling the initial hurdles that came with working in male dominated, traditional setting with so many restrictions, Aisha devotion to accomplishing her task of reaching women in the communities to empower them to produce fresh milk gained more traction. She has become more persistent, tenacious and a problem-solver, working with communities around Abuja and the suburbs.

 “We provide veterinary support to our pastoralists. We ensure that the men are equally satisfied with working with us as well as the women. We also help the households involved to realize that they are essentially important for the system to work well, Aisha explained, pointing out, however, that only about 40 per cent of Cam’s pastoralists have access to mobile phones and there is poor network connectivity.

 “So, even if you have a mobile phone, you probably have to travel to a far location to be able to get access to a network,” Aisha said, noting, however, that one of the things Cam has achieved, from an impact perspective, is training pastoralists to use a smartphone. 

“We train them to use a mobile app. Once you know how to use one mobile app, every other mobile app has become pretty easy. So, we train them on digital skills and the basic ability to use an app,” she said.

While there are many options in the market now for nutritious foods, Aisha believes that milk and dairy give some of the highest levels of nutrition. She said her company’s efforts have snowballed into a major retail expansion for fresh milk and that consumers are re-imagining the beauty of having the opportunity to get supplies every day of the week.

Right now, she works with a team of about 50 full-time workers. 

 “We are working with over 400 pastoralists at the moment and our ambition as an organisation is to reach 600,000 pastoralists by 2030,” Aisha said, stressing that her business model is creating a new career path for youth in rural areas.

Her words: “We talked a lot about technology and moving youth into urban centers. But throughout, what we’ve seen is a lot of youth in rural communities actually want to stay there.

 “They still want to be part of that traditional dairy farming. So, we want to introduce modern dairy farming in a way that will encourage them to stay there as opposed to them having to leave where they are. So, our business model lends very nicely to that. We’re able to bring modern techniques, technology, knowledge and skills to them and then able to create employment opportunities. So, our target is 8,500 rural youths to be employed by 2030.”

Aisha, however, said livestock farmers in Abuja and the rest of the North have been particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to their dependence on weather patterns and natural resources for raising animals. This, she said, prompted her to support them to explore alternative feed sources during the dry season. She is on the campaign to get investors and farmers to cultivate feed and fodder crops to maintain their animals during the dry season.

To her, this as a step in ensuring food security and livelihood stability in the communities.

“Our pastoralists are aware of the impact of climate change and the threat of urban development. They are convinced things have to change in their way of life. Their cattle still move during the dry season. This has been our hardest year in terms of supply during the dry season.

“This 2024, we have recorded very harsh weather conditions. The temperature has been really high. This has dropped our milk supply by 70 per cent. So, we really struggle during this dry season. The biggest realisation  as an organisation is that we cannot afford not to be involved  in finding solutions for  small holder farmers on how they can find  feed and fodder and water resources  to feed their cattle during the dry season because if they don’t  do that, we  won’t have  access to  milk which is our raw material,” she explained.

Cam’s main strategy this year, Aisha emphasised, is to develop solutions to generate feed and fodder during the dry season to ensure the company doesn’t have the same experience it had this year.

“Our model is to create an ecosystem where stakeholders can partner together. Everybody can take one part of the value chain to promote dairy development. Our goal as an organisation is to create a platform for different stakeholders to plug  into it,” she stated.

She said when it comes to feed and fodder for example, “We don’t want to grow it ourselves. We don’t want to go into feed production. We want to identify partners that have expertise in that area and are looking to expand their business and looking for markets. Because we work with pastoralists, a large number of them, we have a captive buyer of feed and fodder. We are thinking about a contracting model that brings all these stakeholders together, and then we serve as an intermediary.”

While noting that her company guarantees the market for the feed and fodder producer and for the pastoralists, she said Cam has been able to provide them with feed at an affordable price. “I believe this kind of aggregated model of pricing has a high chance of success,” Aisha stated, adding that one strategy she believes will help solve the feed and fodder challenge is the Multi-Stakeholders Platform (MSP) for the feed  and fodder sector recently established by the African Union (AU0 and the Federal Government.

According to her, the MSP platform for feed and fodder could be highly beneficial for various players in the agricultural and livestock sectors as it will help to improve access to quality feed and fodder, share knowledge and best practices, and foster collaboration among stakeholders. “The multi-stakeholders platform is a fantastic idea. The more the ecosystem players come together and align on key values, strategies, and key results that they want, the more likely they are going to develop the sector,” Aisha reasoned.

She said at the end of the day, the feed and fodder sector’s priority is to nourish livestock, and the livestock exist to nourish people. While noting that there are symbiotic expectations in this relationship, she said this is critical as feed and fodder becomes critical in the move to get livestock better nourished. “We relied on the livestock for our nutrition. We cannot ignore this problem with climate change and the impact of the harsh weather happening on our environment,” she said.

Aisha stated that the livestock sector in Nigeria is largely undeveloped compared to its counterparts in West Africa, and indeed the continent. “Right now the poultry sector is a bit developed. Looking at cattle, goats and other livestock, we really don’t have a fit for purpose feed solution,” she said, reiterating, however, that the organisation is determined to work with AU, the Federal Government and other stakeholders to address problems in the sector.

“Our focus as an organisation is to make ourselves more accessible to other partners. Our strength is in relationship building, community building. Essentially, we have created a platform that people can plug into and continue to do what you are doing to help the sector. If you are focused on feed and fodder provision, you can partner with us. We find ways to create models that allow our pastoralists to take your feed. We’re happy to bring into the communities those that can deliver health services that are essentially needed. Help people see the possibilities in Nigeria’s dairy development,” she reiterated.

Aisha said for decades now, Cam has been sold the story that milk powders are the only form of dairy.  “We concluded our cows cannot produce milk. Our cows are not bred for milk production. We have been reliant on imports,” she said, insisting however, that “It’s a myth and I think it’s really important that we wake up as a country and as consumers and demand from our producers to have locally made products because they are possible.”

She said with the current exchange rate in Nigeria, milk products are actually becoming less and less feasible for importers and more and more people are looking to local solutions to solve the raw milk supply problem. “So, we have to face our own reality and consider that Nigeria is growing to a population of about 400 million by 2050,” she said

According to Aisha, Nigeria already has a food security challenge on her hands. “We have to find the right solutions to feed our population with an additional 200 million people adding to the population figure in the next few decades,” she stated.

Indeed, Ms. Aisha’s business model, at scale, targets to establish a dairy industry capable of turning Nigeria from a net importer to a net producer of milk. Accordingly, she began her entrepreneurial journey by recognizing that Nigeria’s per capita milk consumption was below 15 liters, significantly lower than other countries in Southern Africa, and that 80 per cent of milk consumed in Nigeria was imported.

Having identified this crucial gap in the market, Aisha viewed this gap as an opportunity for local intervention hence she put her hand in the plough in a bid to help revolutionize the dairy industry. Today, she is one of the most enterprising women in the multifaceted dairy industry working assiduously to significantly cut Nigeria’s milk import.

Prior to throwing her hat into the dairy ring, where her dedication to empowering women in the dairy industry, especially in the North where women’s involvement in agriculture is fraught with extra obstacles is particularly noteworthy, Aisha was a consultant with Mountain Hazelnuts, a hazelnut company in Bhutan.

At Hazelnut Company, she developed guidelines for deploying mobile payments solutions to farmers for payment for hazelnuts. She was also a Special Assistant to the President/Chief Executive of Dangote Group, where she worked on business strategy and supported the Chief Operating Officer (COO) in corporate finance activities and led financial, operational and strategic due diligence on subsidiaries.

Aisha was also co-founder, Head, Product Development and Operations of PAGA, a pioneer Nigerian mobile payments company. She also worked as a business analyst at Accenture. Ms. Aisha holds a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business; Master of Science in Environment and Resources – Land Use and Agriculture from Stanford University, School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences and Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, also from Stanford University.