By Mary Emeka
AfriLabs, in partnership with the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), is expanding opportunities for young Nigerian innovators nationwide, providing funding, mentorship and market access to help homegrown solutions move from ideas and prototypes to commercially viable products.
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The initiative, implemented through the InnovateNaija and FutureMakers programmes, has reached more than 3,500 young Nigerians across the country, supporting innovations in agriculture, manufacturing, renewable energy, healthcare, education, climate technology and other sectors.
At the 2026 InnovateNaija Final Pitch Event and Awards Ceremony held at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja, AfriLabs Director of Programmes, Nanko Madu, said the initiative was designed to ensure that promising innovators are discovered regardless of where they live or the level of access they have to Nigeria’s established innovation ecosystem.
Madu said AfriLabs, a pan-African network of innovation hubs and ecosystem players across the continent, worked closely with NASENI to create a platform capable of identifying innovators from every part of Nigeria and giving them access to mentorship, technical support, funding, markets and visibility.
She said the programme was conceived against the backdrop of Nigeria’s heavy reliance on imported technologies, noting that solutions developed abroad do not always take into account the country’s infrastructure, electricity supply, climate, languages, cultural realities and purchasing power.
According to her, Nigerian innovators are already developing solutions in classrooms, workshops and laboratories, making it necessary to create platforms that can identify, nurture and connect them with opportunities to scale.
Under InnovateNaija, young Nigerians aged between 15 and 40 were given opportunities to showcase their innovations, receive mentorship and compete for financial support. The programme produced champions from all 36 states and the FCT, with each state champion initially receiving ₦2.5 million.
The top three national winners received ₦100 million, ₦30 million and ₦20 million respectively, bringing the total prize money for the national winners to ₦150 million.
The overall winner, Adaeze Ruth Akpagbula of Abia State, received ₦100 million for her PenKeep Smart Poultry Climate Control System, developed through her company, Farm Speak.
Akpagbula, an agricultural engineer, said the technology was designed to help farmers manage changing environmental conditions in poultry, aquaculture, greenhouse and smart irrigation systems.
She said climate-related challenges could lead to substantial losses for farmers, stressing that climate-smart technology could help improve productivity while reducing the impact of extreme weather conditions.
Akpagbula, who co-founded Farm Speak with her husband, Kita Okoma, said one of the major challenges facing hardware innovators in Nigeria was access to funding and infrastructure.
She said the ₦100 million prize would enable the company to expand its production capacity and take its technology to more farmers across the country.
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Madu also disclosed that state governments had played a significant role in strengthening the programme, with the governors of Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Plateau and Kaduna states matching the ₦2.5 million grants given to their respective state champions.
The intervention increased the grants for the champions from the five states to ₦5 million each, demonstrating the growing involvement of subnational governments in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.
In Anambra, Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s Special Adviser on Innovation and Business Incubation, Chinwe Okoli, said the state immediately approved its matching funds after NASENI approached the government.
Okoli, who represented the governor at the ceremony, said the intervention aligned with the state’s technology-driven development agenda, adding that 111 startups had received about ₦364 million through various state programmes.
She also disclosed that 264,000 people had been trained in digital skills, while the state was developing a 13.7-hectare Solution Innovation District to provide space and support for startups, innovators and technology entrepreneurs.
Beyond InnovateNaija, AfriLabs and NASENI are also implementing FutureMakers, a programme targeted at young people between five and 16 years, with emphasis on innovation, problem-solving, design thinking, leadership and entrepreneurship.
Head of the NASENI Innovation Hub, Busola Perez-Folayan, said the programme was deliberately designed to reach young talents beyond the traditional innovation ecosystem.
She said FutureMakers had attracted participants from diverse backgrounds, including children from underserved communities, while the broader NASENI innovation programmes were helping to promote innovation among civil and public servants.
Perez-Folayan said InnovateNaija received more than 1,000 applications before public voting produced 36 state champions and the final 15 national contestants.
She added that the winning innovators would continue to receive support through incubation, business development, technical assistance and investor matching to improve their chances of taking their solutions to the market.
The Federal Government has also backed the broader commercialisation agenda behind the initiative.
Representing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, said the quality of innovations presented by young Nigerians showed the potential available across the country.
Udeh said the administration was working to connect innovators and researchers with investors and industries capable of commercialising their ideas, noting that President Tinubu had forwarded a bill to the National Assembly for the establishment of a National Research and Innovation Development Fund.
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The minister said such a fund would provide dedicated support for research, inventions and innovations with commercial potential, while helping talented Nigerians derive greater economic value from their work.
Spark News reports that hhrough the partnership between AfriLabs and NASENI, the InnovateNaija initiative has therefore emerged as a nationwide platform for identifying local solutions, connecting innovators to opportunities and creating pathways for Nigerian ideas to move from the grassroots to the marketplace.