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By Gabriel Dike
Babcock University (BU) Ilisan, Ogun State has organised two-day Artificial Intelligence (A1) and Babcock Innovation Ventures (BIV) summit to boost the innovation skills of their students on start-up businesses.
The summit with the theme: “Building Africa’s Venture Architecture” exposed BU students to take advantage of AI to hone their start-up ventures before and after their university education.
Speakers at the AI and BIV commercialization summit include the Co-founder, Spacepoint, UAE, Abdullah Alsalmani, Managing Partner of CcHub, Lagos, Nissi Madu, Founder, Lenz AI Innovation Studio, USA, Arvind Ravishunkar, founder, Digital Futurist, South Africa, Nicky Verd, Program Manager, Oracle Academy, Sub Saharan Africa, Bekere Amassoma, Co-founder, Climate Protection Initiative, Folawemi Umunna, Managing Director, Vision Space Nigeria Ltd, Engineer Charles Nnaji, Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, Okikioluwa Onamade and founder, Digital Encode Ltd, Prof. Opa Obadare.
Declaring open the summit, BU Vice Chancellor, Prof. Afolarin Ojewole, said the event marked a major shift in the history of the university and a giant step to hone students innovation skills.
According to him, BU with the summit hopes to redefine education, innovation and research that will be commercialised.
He added: We want to become the Silicon Valley of Nigeria. Each course and department will include innovation into it. We are determined to take BU to the direction of innovation.
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“Babcock has chosen to champion innovation in the Nigerian University System. For our students, it is time to build and BU management is ready to support you. There is a paradigm shift.”
In his remarks, Co-chairman of BIV, Dr. Raymond Okoro observed that over the years, the university has built a strong foundation of academic excellence, rigorous research, and intellectual contribution impact that continues to shape knowledge and society.
Okoro explained that BIV represents a deliberate expansion from knowledge creation to structured commercialization, where research is not only published, but translated into real-world solutions and scalable impact.
“BIV is not an event. It is not a conventional program. It is an institutional platform designed to move ideas from concept to deployment, from theory to market, and from intellectual to measurable impact.
“This summit is therefore not a ceremonial gathering or photo-ops. It is a working platform where ideas are being refined, problems are clearly defined, and pathways to execution are already being activated,” Okoro noted.
He said the summit would continue through structured post-summit engagements where ideas will be developed, validated, and transitioned into viable ventures within the BIV ecosystem.
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