NSIA offers $220,000 prize for Nigeria’s most innovative tech startups

Joy Agwunobi

The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has announced the second edition of its ‘NSIA Prize for Innovation’ programme (NPI 2.0), which will offer a total prize value of $220,000 and a fully-funded five-week training program at Draper University in Silicon Valley, USA.

The NPI programme, which is a multi-year commitment of the authority, is aimed at supporting entrepreneurship, empowering innovators, creating jobs, and enabling the Nigerian tech ecosystem. It is designed to encourage and support ingenuity within the digital sector and to fund new solutions that could result in transformative and scalable positive impact.

The NPI programme is particularly focused on supporting innovative businesses in key sectors such as financial services, agriculture, health, education, manufacturing, logistics & e-mobility, e-commerce & marketplaces, renewables & power, and climate. 

The NSIA explained that the programme will adopt a four-staged competition at the end of which ten (10) finalists will emerge and win varied prizes.

Speaking at  the launch of the  second edition of the NPI programme, Aminu Umar-Sadiq, the NSIA’s managing director, stated that the initiative was a clear indication of the organisation’s support for the Nigerian tech ecosystem. He added that the second edition of the program would help to position Nigerian talent on the global stage. 

“With the second edition of the programme, the Authority is set to reposition home-grown talents for global relevance,” he said.

The first edition of the NPI programme, recorded over 2,000 applications, from which 25 startups were selected for the accelerator phase, following a rigorous selection process.. From these, three startups and seven runners-up won a combined prize of $255,000. 

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