60 Young Innovators Set for NASENI’s FutureMakers Hackathon
By Victor Idajil
The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI, will today kick off its FutureMakers Virtual Hackathon and Pitch Sessions with 60 young innovators drawn from across the country’s six geopolitical zones.
The five-day virtual build will run from August 17 to 21 and will be hosted by the NASENI Innovation Hub. The pitch sessions will follow from August 24 to 26.
The 60 finalists were picked from thousands of entries. During the hackathon, they will work on solutions tailored to specific challenge statements from their zones. Technical facilitators and mentors will guide them through the sprint. Those whose projects meet the mark will advance to the pitch stage.
At the pitch sessions, successful innovators will present to a panel of judges and industry leaders. The sessions will also be streamed live on YouTube and Facebook.
Winners in each zone will get N1.5 million for first place, N1 million for second, and N500,000 for third.
The top innovator from each of the six zones will then move on to the NASENI Invention Fest. There, they will compete for a grand prize of N5 million, an international study tour, and fully funded scholarships to two leading Nigerian universities.
NASENI’s Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, said the programme is meant to turn months of outreach and screening into real products and businesses.
“FutureMakers Week is the culminating moment of the programme cycle, where months of outreach and selection turn into built solutions and backed ventures. Sixty innovators, six zones, six challenges: the programme is deliberately national in reach and local in problem definition,” he said.
Hub Manager, Busola Beckley Perez-Folayan, said FutureMakers is designed as a long-term talent pipeline, not just a one-off contest.
Winners, she added, will get access to SparkLab, mentorship, training, and scholarship opportunities in addition to the final N5 million prize.
“The virtual format widens access to innovators beyond Abuja and Lagos. This is a working demonstration of government-backed innovation infrastructure delivering for young Nigerians,” she said.
According to NASENI, the initiative aligns with its mandate to shift Nigeria from a consumer to a producer economy. By structuring the competition zone by zone, participants are expected to build solutions that address challenges in their own communities.
FutureMakers is being run in partnership with academic and ecosystem players including MIVA Open University and the African University of Science and Technology, Abuja. The NASENI Innovation Hub is also part of the AfriLabs network.
The agency said the programme targets early-stage Nigerian innovators aged 5 to 16, helping them develop tech-driven solutions to development problems in their regions, and linking them to NASENI’s engineering, prototyping and commercialisation support.
