President Bola Tinubu’s administration has announced plans to establish a dedicated research and innovation fund as Nigerian innovator Adaeze Akpagbula receives a ₦100 million award for developing technology to help farmers manage climate-related challenges.
Akpagbula, an entrepreneur from Abia State and co-founder of Farm Speak, emerged as the overall winner at the 2026 InnovateNaija Final Pitch Event and Awards Ceremony held in Abuja. Her winning invention, the PenKeep Smart Poultry Climate Control System, is designed to support climate management in poultry farming, aquaculture, greenhouse operations and smart irrigation.
The Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr Kingsley Udeh, announced the Federal Government’s funding plans at the event, where he represented Tinubu. Brandspur Politics gathered that the President had forwarded a bill to the National Assembly seeking the establishment of the National Research and Innovation Development Fund to provide dedicated financial support for research and commercially viable inventions.
The proposed fund is intended to help bridge the gap between developing new technologies and bringing them to market. Many Nigerian innovators face difficulties securing the resources needed to manufacture their products, test them and expand production beyond the prototype stage.
For Akpagbula, the ₦100 million prize offers an opportunity to increase her company’s production capacity and extend its reach to more farmers. She identified inadequate funding, poor infrastructure and unreliable electricity as major obstacles confronting hardware developers in Nigeria.
Udeh urged the award recipients to invest their grants in improving their products and building sustainable businesses capable of creating jobs and addressing local challenges. He also called on Nigerians to support locally developed products that meet required quality standards, rather than buying them simply because they were made in the country.
The initiative is being implemented through a partnership involving the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) and AfriLabs, with the aim of identifying young innovators and connecting them with investors, industries and other potential partners.
AfriLabs Director of Programmes, Nanko Madu, said its InnovateNaija and FutureMakers initiatives had reached more than 3,500 young Nigerians. The innovations supported through the programmes cover agriculture, manufacturing, renewable energy, healthcare, education and climate technology.
Madu noted that locally developed solutions could be better suited to Nigeria’s specific needs, including electricity challenges, infrastructure limitations, climate conditions, language differences and consumer purchasing power.
NASENI Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Khalil Halilu, said the agency was reorganising its research and development activities around creation, collaboration and commercialisation to help move innovations from laboratories and workshops into the marketplace.
The agency also awarded development grants totalling ₦140 million to three winners of its inter-agency innovation competition, while three winners in its intra-agency competition received a combined ₦22.5 million in cash prizes.
The Federal Government’s proposed research fund, alongside the awards and development grants, is expected to provide additional support for Nigerian innovators seeking to turn locally developed technologies into commercially viable products.
