AfriLabs Advances Climate-Smart Farming With ₦100m Innovation Prize

By Fatima Saka

A climate-smart poultry technology developed by a young Nigerian agricultural engineer has won the ₦100 million top prize at the 2026 InnovateNaija competition, highlighting growing support for homegrown solutions to challenges facing the agricultural sector.

Adaeze Ruth Akpagbula of Abia State emerged overall winner with the PenKeep Smart Poultry Climate Control System, developed through her company, Farm Speak.

The AfriLabs Director of Programmes, Nanko Madu, disclosed this at the 2026 InnovateNaija Final Pitch Event and Awards Ceremony held at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja.

Madu said the initiative, implemented by AfriLabs in partnership with the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), had reached more than 3,500 young Nigerians across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

She said the programme was designed to identify and support innovators regardless of their location or access to Nigeria’s established innovation ecosystem.

According to her, the initiative provides promising innovators with mentorship, technical support, funding, market opportunities and visibility to help transform their ideas into viable businesses.

Madu said the programme was also conceived against Nigeria’s reliance on imported technologies, noting that foreign solutions did not always reflect the country’s infrastructure, electricity supply, climate, languages, cultural realities and purchasing power.

She said Nigerian innovators were already developing solutions in classrooms, workshops and laboratories, stressing the need for platforms that could 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.

Akpagbula, an agricultural engineer, said the PenKeep technology was designed to help farmers manage changing environmental conditions in poultry, aquaculture, greenhouse and smart irrigation systems.

She said climate-related challenges could cause substantial losses for farmers, stressing that climate-smart technologies could improve productivity while reducing the effects of extreme weather conditions.

Akpagbula, who co-founded Farm Speak with her husband, Kita Okoma, said access to funding and infrastructure remained major challenges for hardware innovators in Nigeria.

She said the ₦100 million prize would enable the company to expand its production capacity and take the technology to more farmers across the country.

Madu also disclosed that the governors of Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Plateau and Kaduna states had matched 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, reflecting increased subnational participation in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.

Representing Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, the Special Adviser on Innovation and Business Incubation, Chinwe Okoli, said the state immediately approved its matching funds after NASENI approached the government.

Okoli 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 said 264,000 people had also 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 implementing FutureMakers, a programme targeting young people between five and 16 years.

The programme focuses on innovation, problem-solving, design thinking, leadership and entrepreneurship.

The Head of the NASENI Innovation Hub, Busola Perez-Folayan, said FutureMakers was deliberately designed to reach young talents beyond the traditional innovation ecosystem.

She said the programme had attracted participants from diverse backgrounds, including children from underserved communities, while broader NASENI innovation programmes were also promoting 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 Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Dr Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, who represented President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the ceremony, said the quality of innovations presented by young Nigerians demonstrated the potential available across the country.

Udeh said the Federal Government was working to connect innovators and researchers with investors and industries capable of commercialising their ideas.

He said 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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According to him, the proposed fund would provide dedicated support for research, inventions and innovations with commercial potential, while helping talented Nigerians derive greater economic value from their work.

Through the AfriLabs-NASENI partnership, InnovateNaija is providing a nationwide platform for identifying local solutions, supporting innovators and creating pathways for Nigerian ideas to move from the grassroots into the marketplace.