Stakeholders Call for Greater Investment and Support to Boost Nigeria’s Tech Innovators

At a recent World Product Day event in Lagos, key players in Nigeria’s investment sector highlighted the major obstacles facing tech innovators across Africa remain a lack of capital and coaching. Tina Mbachu, Executive Director of the Innovative Africa Foundation, emphasized that these missing elements are crucial for young entrepreneurs to unlock their full potential and scale their innovations globally.

Mbachu stressed the importance of investing in grassroots innovation to empower young African changemakers. She explained that the event’s mission goes beyond celebrating products, serving instead as a platform to spotlight young innovators who are addressing real problems with real solutions. The foundation’s goal is to equip these entrepreneurs with the knowledge and tools necessary to turn ideas into impactful solutions tailored to local contexts.

A significant challenge for early-stage founders is moving from concept to implementation due to gaps in skills and resources. Mbachu pointed out that many innovators struggle with testing, validating, and understanding whether their solutions truly address local needs. She stressed the importance of local thinking in innovation, saying solutions must be designed with deep awareness of the community’s specific problems and constraints.

To bridge these gaps, Innovate Africa is spearheading initiatives that bring together innovators, builders, and investors from across the continent to foster a Pan-African ecosystem. Through events like the Inspire Africa Conference and partnerships with global organizations such as Silicon Valley Product Group, the foundation delivers high-quality coaching and training aimed at building products that think globally but act locally.

Other voices at the event echoed the call for broader collaboration and learning within Nigeria’s tech space. Oluwole Adebiyi from Moniepoint highlighted the need for product managers to learn beyond their immediate environments, while Anthonio Gabriel presented his team’s Aveum Markets, a solution designed to reduce post-harvest losses in Nigeria’s agricultural sector—illustrating the focus on scalable, impactful innovations.

Source: This day