In an era where traditional finance meets the frontier of agriculture, Ashleigh Nyambirai, CEO of TN Livestock Trust, is reimagining the "bankable asset". Through an ambitious plan to tokenise cattle and list them on the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange, Nyambirai seeks to transform the liquidity of livestock investment.
By valuing assets at one token per kilogramme, the model democratises access for Zimbabweans previously sidelined by high entry costs.
Coupled with a shift toward 100% pen feeding to ensure predictable growth, this initiative marks a bold step toward a tech-driven agricultural future. Nyambirai (AN) spoke about the innovation in an interview with Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN) on the platform In Conversation with Trevor. Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Greetings, welcome to In Conversation With Trevor, brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services. I go beyond the headlines and beyond the sensational. Today I'm in conversation with Ashleigh Nyambirai, the chief executive officer of TN Livestock Trust. If you enjoy this conversation, remember to subscribe, to like and to share. Let's get down to some business. Ashleigh Nyambirai, welcome To In Conversation with Trevor.
AN: Thank you so much for having me, Trevor.
TN: Second time that we get a sIt and have a conversation. The first time was at the Ideas Festival, first of all, where you, I think you just blew us away by your passion for turning livestock into bankable assets. What are your memories of that idea, first of all, and how did it work for you?
AN: It's all over, because I was very anxious to present. I'd never really presented in front of professionals before. It was usually to, like, common people that I want to talk to, to get to invest in livestock. Not business people that were going to criticise the model.
So, I was really, really anxious. But after it, I think it opened a lot of doors in the professional space. I think a lot more people started taking me seriously.
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As a by-product of that presentation, um, so it's been, I wish you could understand how different my life is before and after the Ideas.
TN: Wow. So, it's been transformative. Amazing! That's amazing to hear. So, for those people that are out there, Ideas, first of all, 2026 is on, October 28 to 31. So come join us. You have already heard the testimony. We got to go to breaking news, the breaking news is shared by your father, and that is that TN Livestock will be tokenising livestock with plans to list on the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange. Talk to me about the idea, what was behind that idea and what the timelines are, what the process looks like?
AN: All right, so we are not yet clear on the timelines, we'll need guidance from our group CEO, but kind of the idea of tokenising cattle has been something that we have been exploring for a long time.
So, I think over a year ago that's when he first brought it up. And I guess we have been trying to find a way to navigate the model, to make it suitable for the market, for Zimbabwe's market, and to make it suitable for, I guess, Africans in general.
I know that there is a tokenised cattle market, I think, in Eastern Europe. And I think that's what kick-started the conversation around to the organisation.
And my dad has been working with his team to kind of figure out how to go about it. And when he announced it, um, listening, right?
The day he announced it to the world is the same day he announced it to the group. At least it's something that we were already thinking about. It's something that we already working on.
So we've all been meeting about it. So the announcement wasn't a surprise and that we didn't know that that's direction, but it was a surprise because we didn't know that that's when it was going to be announced.
But the idea of it is basically, I think the way we're going to go about it is, I think as you explained, maybe one token representing one kg. We weigh our herd. And then we take the group weight of the herd. And then we ascribe a token to a portion of that weight, and then another portion is going to act as security for what we list on the VFX.
And people that can then invest, purchase those tokens and they represent the live weight of an animal.
And obviously he then added the 20% kind of interest on that, which means that, for example, if you come in with a $1000 and let's say the price of beef is, um, US$2 a KG.
You will buy 500 tokens, and then you'll get maybe an extra 100 um, because of that, uh, kind of that interest rate that he's putting onto it.
So that's how it's going to operate. And it makes it easier for people to come in and invest in livestock because before our original model started with 1 500, as the initial deposit for two heifers, because market rates were like 750 per herd. Right?
And a lot of people who maybe have wanted to invest in cattle were not able to do so because they couldn't meet minimum investment requirements. But now, because it's tokenised and because it's tokenised by the KG, more people in Zimbabwe who are interested in investing in a livestock backed asset can now do that.
So, I think that's the key driver for it. And it's easier to trade if it's on the VFX. So, we had our certificate of deposit, which allows people to trade and transfer the asset, but it's not as liquid and it's not as instant as listing it on the VFX.
But going about it this way, I think, allows it to behave more like an asset. Think about shares. Yeah. Not the stock market performances. And I think that's kind of like the goal and the idea.
We're still fine tuning the details. So don't take anything because I think we are still working on it with stress testing the model and making sure that it works.
I think that's the one thing about my dad is that he wants to make sure that he presents to the market something that works and he's not afraid to start over.
TN: He's not. He's not, I'm going to go there. This is something I'm seeing in him. So, it says that you are going to be migrating. You love talking to 100% pen feeding. What does that do? So, link between 100% pen feeding and tokenisation.
(Read full interview on www.stanndard.co.zw)
*“In Conversation With Trevor” is a weekly show brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services.
