Femi Kayode

Femi Kayode is the first in Nigeria to build a system for livestock health and disease prevention. He is doing that by building a veterinarian and farmers community and involving state and federal governments. He pioneers a tracking system for the animals and widespread diseases.
He is also pioneering and developing a national database of registered animals and partnering with existing systems for tracking and spread of diseases and fast prevention. This is also affecting human health which is endangered by consuming unhealthy animals.

In order to build a system for disease prediction and prevention, Femi thought that the crucial solution was to connect farmers with each other and connect veterinarians with farmers to enable him draw patterns to forecast and predict diseases.

To enable the disease tracking and prevention, Femi developed an easy to manage application through which the information is being uploaded and early warnings of upcoming disease is distributed.

He also thought that this communication system should involve veterinarians, so his application connects veterinarians and farmers. This application is free for farmers, which prompts them to actively participate especially that Femi is going to these farmers with education and training. In Femi’s system, farmers have much higher income because of the decreased animal mortality rate, he thinks that in long term it will influence the economic growth for instance through animal export.

The new system which Femi has developed allows instant distribution of vaccines in endangered areas saving not only livestock and also human lives because some diseases which are infected by animals affect human beings.

The livestock sector employs about 1.3 billion people around the world and supports the livelihoods of 600 million farmers in third world countries.

In Nigeria, livestock accounts for one third of the country’s GDP providing revenue to the government as well as income and social security to farmers especially in rural areas. Livestock supports farmers livelihoods but the greatest constraint to livestock production is animal diseases. Nigeria loses 29.2 billion naira to livestock diseases as a result of the fact that the country lacks the capacity of veterinary services to track and control diseases.

Farmers lack information about biosecurity and disease prevention, there is lack of data available to the government about the number of livestock farmers and the number of animals in the country. There is a disconnect between the rural farmers especially cattle herders and veterinary doctors. There is a lack of database on animal health care services in the country and veterinarians do not understand their role in animal disease prevention.

Animal disease outbreak over time has presented a public health challenge in Nigeria but recently the frequency of such disease outbreaks has increased tremendously. The recent outbreaks of zoonotic diseases such as bird flu and Ebola which has called for immediate public health action has proven that animal disease surveillance is of utmost importance. The animal disease surveillance in Nigeria has failed grossly because veterinarians are not connected with rural farmers to get real time information about disease outbreak, veterinarians do not understand their role in disease reporting, information about disease outbreak hardly gets out of communities until thousands of animals have been lost putting public health at risk. Hence the collection, collation and interpretation of disease outbreak is mostly incomplete and untimely.

Animal disease surveillance is an effective strategy for preventing and controlling of diseases. Oftentimes the outbreak of disease outbreak does not give notice before it occurs and can happen across the borders of several countries. These diseases are likely to spread like wildfire when they occur resulting in high morbidity with consequent economic impact. Developing an effective and efficient disease surveillance system allows will enable the country to detect disease outbreaks early enough that will prompt early intervention to prevent mortality and morbidity that may result from these zoonotic diseases.

Femi is a trained veterinarian and an entrepreneur who is passionately improving the Nigerian livestock health system. He started Vetsark alongside his partner in 2018 to help farmers develop sustainable practices that will enable them to become more profitable in the livestock business. He established Vetsark as a platform for farmers and veterinary doctors to discuss livestock problems and to learn about the right farming environment to prevent livestock health risks such as weight loss, natural abortions, infections, and sickness. Femi developed poultry feed-meal formula and partnered with a company to produce poultry that maintains basic health requirements and fuels growth of the birds.

Femi developed an app to prevent, track and manage animal disease outbreaks through the surveillance of animal populations to provide important early warnings of emerging threats to animals and human populations from infectious disease epidemics. For Femi to gain access to the farmers in a state, he works through the Veterinary director in the state who helps him to gain access to the farmers and veterinary doctors. He registers the livestock farmers in the state and gets the veterinarians to register all the farmers they work with. He introduces the Vetsark app to the farmers for free and the veterinarians for a fee of $25 dollars a year, and he organizes trainings and teaches them how to care for their livestock about biosecurity and about the use of the app.

He works with the government to recognize animal health surveillance as a key element in predicting public health risks. This allows the government to provide necessary information about animal disease outbreak to help mitigate the effect on both animal and human population. He has been able to work with the government to enact a policy to protect animals in Nigeria, by investing in vaccines for cattle to reduce the deaths and has connected the government to livestock farmers in the rural areas to be able to access government funded programs and services for livestock farmers through the farmer initiative program Femi enables farmers get direct support for their livestock from the government, reducing the mistrust because of bottlenecks.

To track animals and disease outbreak in livestock Femi started a national register for livestock farmers and conducted a survey to get real time data on cattle and livestock in Nigeria. Through the app he gets real time data on animal disease outbreak, the veterinarians use it to take inventories and record cases of animal diseases they attend to and report real time disease outbreak, on the back end they can read disease patterns around the country. The app captures disease patterns and forecast disease outbreak, forewarning farmers and positioning the government to take targeted actions towards reducing animal mortality.

Femi teaches the veterinary doctors how to use the app for disease reporting to ensure all reported diseases are captured and reported to the state at the end of the day. He presently works with 35 veterinarians and over 3000 farmers.

The app designed by Femi is used to register farmers using their mobile phones When farmers report cases of diseases in their livestock, the app picks up the location of the farmer and automatically connects him with a veterinary doctor closest to him to follow up. The app is also used by the veterinary doctor to record cases of reported livestock diseases by farmers and also used to take inventory of their products.

In 2018, only 6 months after launching Vetsark, Femi has already worked with the state and federal government of Nigeria. He has put on the radar the inclusion of animal health as a main focus, and he has trained 3,000 farmers and worked with 35 veterinarians in Nigeria. By 2022, he plans to involve 70 percent of the existing 4,000 vets in Nigeria and include at least 100,000 farmers.

Femi Kayode grew up in Nigeria, and while in primary school he joined the Junior engineers’ technicians and scientists club and became the President. In secondary school Femi took up leadership roles and became the leader of the science club. While in university, Femi joined a youth Christian fellowship group and turned it into a program that taught young people about social entrepreneurship and he prepared them for a future where they all had the enthusiasm to challenge the status quo and change things in their environment. In the fellowship, Femi rose to become the president and revamped the objectives of the fellowship program. He started ”Impact Mission’’ aimed at harnessing the potentials of University students to change the ecosystem.

After university, Femi practiced veterinary medicine in Port Harcourt. While in veterinarian school, he started several businesses with a loan and succeeded immensely but while working as a veterinary doctor he realized the problems that rural livestock farmers faced, and he decided to move to Kogi state to help rural farmers overcome their greatest challenges to livestock farming.