NASENI has awarded ₦100 million to Farm Speak co-founder Adaeze Ruth Akpagbula for PenKeep, a climate-control hardware platform designed to cut weather-related losses on Nigerian poultry, aquaculture and greenhouse farms.

The 2026 InnovateNaija Final Pitch Event in Abuja named 15 national finalists drawn from 36 state champions and more than 1,000 applications, according to Busola Perez Folayan, head of the NASENI Innovation Hub. State-stage selection rested on public voting, she said, before expert pitch review at the national final. Five governors — Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Plateau and Kaduna — matched the original ₦2.5 million state grants, lifting each champion's purse to ₦5 million.

What does PenKeep measure?

PenKeep regulates temperature, humidity and other production-environment variables across poultry houses, fish tanks, greenhouses and irrigation lines. Akpagbula, an agricultural engineer, co-founded Farm Speak with her husband Kita Okoma. She said the system helps farmers "gain greater control over their production environment." She listed three blockers for Nigerian hardware innovators: funding, infrastructure and electricity. The prize, she added, will let Farm Speak "expand its production capacity and reach more farmers."

How does the prize money break down?

The top-three national awards totalled ₦150 million: ₦100 million, ₦30 million and ₦20 million. The 36 state champions each started with ₦2.5 million before governor matches. NASENI's separate Inter-Agency and Intra-Agency competitions disbursed ₦140 million in development grants to three inter-agency winners and ₦22.5 million in cash to three intra-agency winners. Total disclosed disbursements exceed ₦375 million.

What is the commercialisation push behind the awards?

NASENI Executive Vice Chairman and CEO Khalil Suleiman Halilu said the agency was reorienting its R&D portfolio around what he called "Creation, Collaboration and Commercialisation." The goal, he told the ceremony, is to close the distance between laboratory and market.

Representing President Bola Tinubu, Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology Dr Kingsley Udeh said the administration wants Nigerian innovations to move "beyond ideas and prototypes to the marketplace." Udeh disclosed that Tinubu had forwarded to the National Assembly a bill establishing a National Research and Innovation Development Fund for research, inventions and innovations "with commercial potential."

Where is the talent pipeline running?

AfriLabs Director of Programmes Nanko Madu said InnovateNaija — for researchers aged 15 to 40 — and the FutureMakers programme, for ages 5 to 16, together reached more than 3,500 young Nigerians across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Disclosed cohort focus areas included agriculture, manufacturing, renewable energy, healthcare, education and climate technology.

Madu argued the work matters because Nigeria "continued to rely heavily on imported technologies, many of which might not adequately reflect the country's infrastructure, electricity supply, climate, languages, cultural realities and purchasing power."

What does sub-national co-funding look like?

Anambra State Special Adviser on Innovation and Business Incubation Chinwe Okoli said Governor Chukwuma Soludo approved matching funds the same day NASENI requested them. Okoli added that Anambra has supported 111 startups with roughly ₦364 million and trained 264,000 people in digital skills. The state is constructing a 13.7-hectare Solution Innovation District as physical infrastructure for the cohort.

What is the next milestone?

The National Research and Innovation Development Fund bill pending in the National Assembly — paired with NASENI's incubator-to-investor pipeline and the state-level matching model — sets up a calibration point later in 2026: whether the ₦375 million-plus award slate converts into measured commercial uptake for products such as PenKeep, or stalls at prototype portfolio.