NSIA Innovation prize will award $255,000 to early-stage innovators, startups, techopreneurs, others

The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has launched a $255,000 innovation prize that will benefit startups, technopreneurs, and innovators’ businesses in the form of cash and equity investments.

Nairametrics understands that NSIA specifically created this to support early-stage Nigerian innovators.  

Details of the Innovation Prize: The Innovation Prize program is designed as a business development initiative to help early-stage, scalable solutions by providing education, mentorship, and funding.  

The program’s goal is to foster and fund innovation in the digital ecosystem, as well as to provide funding for early-stage tech-enabled solutions with the potential to have a significant, positive, and long-term economic impact.  

The application period for the competition will begin in March 2023, and the program will run until the end of the second quarter of 2023.  

Programme details: This edition of the programme will have three stages at the end of which ten (10) finalists will emerge.  

The top three (3) of these will win various prizes comprising equity investment into the underlying business as well as cash prizes. The last 7 finalists will get consolation prizes.  

Candidates who have been shortlisted will participate in an acceleration program to improve their capabilities and digital solutions. On demo day, the top ten entries will compete in a pitch session, from which a winner will be chosen. The program will last 16 weeks.   

The innovation prize is expected to:  

• Identify, build, and finance early-stage innovative solutions to catalyze economic growth, improve the nation’s productive capacity, and create jobs.  
• Provide an enabling platform to showcase early-stage innovative solutions with transformative potential.  
• Create an avenue for Nigerian innovators to raise capital and network with a universe of investors and established technology experts 
• Strengthen the capital formation process for viable digital solutions originating in Nigeria. 
• Inspire ingenuity, creativity, innovation, and breakthrough ideas in the digital ecosystem in Nigeria through cycles of prize competitions. 

How to Apply: To find out more and make an application, visit here.

About NSIA: The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, which manages the sovereign wealth fund, launched the NSIA Prize for Innovation in December 2022. The innovation prize is a capacity-building initiative aimed at boosting innovation within Nigeria’s digital ecosystem.  

The NSIA has a multi-year commitment to empower, encourage and support early-stage innovators within the digital ecosystem. The commitment is also to fund early-stage tech-enabled solutions that could result in cost-effective, scalable, and transformative economic impact, which is reflected in the innovation prize.