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The UK-Nigeria Tech Hub, in partnership with The Nest Innovation Technology Park, has launched the Nigeria Innovation Cluster Exchange (NICE), a national initiative aimed at addressing fragmentation within Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem by fostering collaboration among entrepreneurship support organisations (ESOs), research institutions, startups and other stakeholders.
Funded by the UK Government through the Digital Access Programme and implemented by The Nest Innovation Technology Park, the initiative seeks to create a coordinated, data-driven national network that will improve collaboration, knowledge sharing and sustainability across Nigeria’s growing technology ecosystem.
Speaking on the initiative, Co-founder of The Nest Innovation Technology Park, Oluwajoba Oloba, said the programme represents a shift from isolated innovation efforts to a coordinated national system capable of driving economic growth.
“Today, we are moving from celebrating isolated pockets of brilliance to engineering a collective national engine for growth,” he said.
“NICE provides the architecture to unify our many ESOs and startups, allowing them to function like a coordinated army of ants. We are not just launching a programme; we are activating the connective tissue Nigeria’s economy has long demanded.”
The initiative was developed following insights from the 2025 UK Digital Trade and Innovation Tour coordinated by the UK-Nigeria Tech Hub in collaboration with the Office for Nigerian Digital Innovation (ONDI), adapting global best practices to Nigeria’s innovation landscape.
According to the organisers, the programme is designed to tackle what they described as a “coordination deficit” within the ecosystem, where innovation hubs, research centres and entrepreneurship support organisations often operate independently, resulting in duplication of efforts and limited long-term support for startups.
They noted that despite Nigeria’s rapid growth in sectors such as financial technology, agricultural technology, cybersecurity and health technology, fewer than 10 per cent of startups survive beyond their third year, while data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicates that youth underemployment remains above 50 per cent.
The pilot programme will strengthen innovation clusters across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones through five key focus areas.
These include mapping and formalising innovation clusters to provide credible data for investors and policymakers; promoting knowledge exchange through expert residencies between Nigerian innovation clusters and their counterparts in the United Kingdom; facilitating collaborative innovation sprints to develop market-ready solutions for local challenges; establishing a sustainability framework that allows local stakeholders to manage the clusters independently after the pilot phase; and supporting strategic sectors such as AgriTech, CyberTech and HealthTech to accelerate economic diversification.
The organisers said the programme would also enable incubators, accelerators and innovation hubs to collaborate beyond geographical boundaries, ensuring that entrepreneurs across the country have greater access to expertise, mentorship and innovation resources.
The pilot phase of the Nigeria Innovation Cluster Exchange commenced on July 6, 2026, with entrepreneurship support organisations, research institutions and industry stakeholders invited to participate.
The UK-Nigeria Tech Hub is part of the UK Government’s Digital Access Programme, which supports inclusive, responsible and sustainable digital transformation in Nigeria.
The Nest Innovation Technology Park is an African innovation hub that provides incubation, research and policy support for startups, researchers and technology entrepreneurs.
