In the long journey of a nation’s development, there are moments when a long awaited policy finally catches up with potential. The recent approval by the Federal Executive Council of the National Research and Innovation Development Fund (NRIDF) is precisely such a moment for Nigeria and one worth celebrating.

Presided over by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and benchmarked at an ambitious $500 million in annual financing, this  might sound like merely another government fund; but for a country that seek to strengthen its sovereignty  this is a declaration of intent that Nigeria intends to show more seriousness in finding solutions to its own problems while also competing  in the global knowledge economy, not just as a huge consumer of technology, but as a producer of it.

For decades, Nigeria’s research ecosystem has been a paradox of abundance and neglect. We have produced and still producing world-class scientists, engineers, and thinkers, yet our national expenditure on research and development has languished at  an estimated 0.2% of GDP—far below the African Union’s 1% target and an intangible fraction of what innovation-driven economies invest. The private sector on the other hand has ‘tried’ by contributing only 1% of research investment, leaving our universities and research institutes highly underfunded (there is a serious conversation we need have on this another day) and our brightest minds either underutilized or exported. The NRIDF chaired by Vice President Shettima and led by the Honorable Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Dr Kingsley Udeh, if implemented with not just vision and discipline but also fairness, transparency and accountability, can adapt and mitigate many not so good trajectories beguiling our R&D sector. But setting up the fund and funding models alone are not enough. To truly spur sustainable growth, Nigeria must pair this financial commitment with three strategic pillars: a robust and modern national technology assessment and valuation system, aggressive research commercialization strategies, and an ecosystem that bridges the ever widening gap between academic discovery and industrial application aka a buying market (local and global).

The NRIDF as an Engine of Sustainable Growth

Sustainable sovereign growth is not built on extractive industries alone; but also on  knowledge, patents, and problem-solving capacity which unfortunately sustains and grows the extractive sectors. The NRIDF’s mandate to finance competitive research, innovation infrastructure, and capability development in strategic fields aligns perfectly with Nigeria’s aspiration to become a trillion dollar economy under the Renewed Hope agenda. But the fund’s true power lies in its potential to diversify the economy at its molecular level. When a researcher in Zaria develops a drought-resistant sorghum variety, or a team in Lagos engineers a low-cost medical diagnostic device, or a startup in Port Harcourt pioneers clean energy storage, they should not merely be winning grants doing foreign exchanges—they  should be guided to improve the technology behind the solutions, access local resources for mass production, paying customers and creating new industrial frontiers.

The NRIDF can spur sustainable growth by deliberately targeting research that addresses Nigeria’s most pressing structural challenges: food security, public health, National security, energy transition, and environmental sustainability. By ensuring it to be granular with accountability and transparency system, ideally there should be a sub-committee created for this, requiring beneficiary institutions and entities to meet performance benchmarks and submit periodic  reports, the fund can ensure that every naira disbursed is accountable not just to bureaucratic process, but to public and national development. This is part of how research transforms from an academic exercise into an economic multiplier.The NRDIF must not be academic biased, nor startup biased nor finance biased, its must balance its biases to cover broad areas of critical thinking towards supporting all pipelines of innovation both academic and non academic, structured or unstructured, urban or rural..

Building a National Technology Assessment and Valuation System

However, money without measurement is a problematic buffet of consumption. One of the most strategic investments Nigeria can make through the NRIDF is the establishment of a national technology assessment and valuation system. Currently, Nigeria lacks a standardized and modern mechanism to evaluate the commercial potential, intellectual property value, and market readiness of research outputs. This is why too many brilliant Nigerian innovations die in the  pre- proof-of-concept and and if lucky before market entry stages.

A national technology assessment system would function as the economy’s innovation compass. It would evaluate research outputs across academic and non-academic pipelines, assign valuation metrics based on global standards, identify protectable intellectual property, and map commercial pathways including financing models. Such a system would give the Nigerian finance sector including banks, investors, venture capitalists, and industry partners the confidence to invest in Nigerian research because they would have credible, independent assessments of technology readiness levels and market potential.

More importantly, a valuation system would protect Nigeria’s intellectual sovereignty. In a world where technology transfer often masquerades as dependency, knowing the precise value of our indigenous innovations allows us to solve our dynamic problems as well as negotiate from a position of strength—whether in public-private partnerships, international joint ventures, or licensing agreements. It would also create a national repository of innovation assets, ensuring that publicly funded research does not become privately appropriated without fair return to the Nigerian people.

Research Commercialization: The Bridge from Discovery to Prosperity

The ultimate measure of the NRIDF’s success will not be the number of papers published in international journals, but the number of products launched, companies formed, and jobs created from Nigerian research. This requires a deliberate, multi-layered commercialization strategy not quick wins and a couple of hackathons.

First, the NRIDF should support Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices (IPTTO) in every public university and major research institute and Federal Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation agencies. These offices would be staffed not by academics alone, but must include business development professionals, patent attorneys, and market analysts whose sole mandate is to shepherd research from the laboratory to the marketplace. They would manage intellectual property portfolios, negotiate licensing deals, and support faculty spin-off companies.

Second, Nigeria must create Innovation Prototyping Grants—a dedicated stream within the NRIDF specifically for late-stage research that requires funding for prototyping, clinical trials, field testing, or pilot manufacturing. Most research fails not at the idea stage, but at the translation stage, where innovators need capital to prove functionality and scalability. By ring-fencing funds for this critical phase, the NRIDF can dramatically increase proper incubation and reduce the valley of death mortality rate for Nigerian innovations.

Third, the fund should catalyze Industry-Academia Research Partnerships with platforms and matching fund requirements. When industry partners commit their own capital to co-fund research with universities, the research is automatically aligned with market needs. The NRIDF could offer a sustainable matching ratio, derisking and incentivizing private sector R&D investment and ensuring that research outputs have immediate industrial applications. This would also address the current imbalance where the private sector contributes only 1% of national research investment. I believe there are partnership models to that can boost private sector contribution to National research investment, although there are quite a number of private sector players that currently support research and innovation, there have to be some coordinated approach to scale as well as get desired return on investments (grant and catalytic capital)

Finally, the NRIDF must invest in digital solutions for processing, archiving, security including a modernized intellectual property framework and digital marketplace for Nigerian innovations. Researchers should be able to register patents, trademarks, and industrial designs with speed and affordability, let’s be clear it must be easy and cheap for researchers. A national innovation exchange platform could showcase vetted technologies to global investors, turning Nigerian research into a tradable asset class.

An Aspirational Vision: Nigeria as Africa’s Innovation Capital

Imagine Nigeria a decade from now. A young researcher at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, develops a biodegradable packaging material from cassava waste. The National Technology Assessment and Valuation System evaluates it, assigns a market potential of $50 million annually, and files a global patent. The Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Office connect her with a manufacturing partner in Aba and an agritech distributor in Lagos. An Innovation Translation Grant funds her pilot factory. Within three years, her company employs 200 Nigerians and exports to West Africa.

This is not fantasy. This is the logical outcome of a system where the NRIDF, technology assessment, and commercialization strategies work in concert. It is how South Korea transformed from a war-torn economy to a technology superpower. It is how we will transform the Nigerian human capital, build absorbable markets, and now we have —if we execute wisely—the funding mechanism to replicate and even surpass these models.

The Path Forward

The NRIDF is a promise, but promises require institutional architecture. The proposed 17-member National Council on Research and Innovation, chaired by the Vice President and drawing from academia, industry, and government, offers a commendable governance structure. However, for this fund to achieve its transformative potential, the forthcoming legislative framework must be inclusive, transparent, and insulated from political capture (very important). The concerns raised by academic stakeholders about consultation and funding benchmarks must be addressed constructively, ensuring that the NRIDF is a national asset, not a partisan instrument.

Nigeria stands at an inflection point. We can continue to be a nation that exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum, or we can become a nation that also exports knowledge, patents, and innovation-driven solutions. The NRIDF gives us the capital to choose the latter. But capital is only potential energy. It is the systems we build around it—the valuation frameworks, the commercialization pipelines, the industry partnerships—that will convert that potential into kinetic, economy-wide prosperity.

The world is not waiting for Nigeria. The global knowledge economy is accelerating, driven by artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and clean energy transitions. But with the NRIDF, a national technology assessment system, and a fierce commitment to research commercialization, Nigeria does not have to catch up. We will leapfrog. We must scale to an innovation ecosystem that is uniquely African, globally competitive, and fundamentally sustainable.

The laboratory lights are on. The fund is approved. The question now is whether we have the national will to really want to turn our scientific discoveries into shared prosperity. I believe we do. And when we do, the new story of Nigeria’s economic transformation will be written not in only music and entertainment, food, ‘sharp mouth’ and plenty guiness book of world records, but in patents, products, and the unleashed true genius of our people.

Bankole Oloruntoba is the CEO of Nigeria Climate Innovation Center, a World Bank and FGN 2018 initiative based in the Lagos Business School campus and the Honorary Consul to Finland in Lagos