From Lab to Market: TETFund to Turn 500 Nigerian Innovations into Businesses, Jobs

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja 

Nigeria is moving to end decades of research gathering dust on library shelves, as the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) prepares to push between 400 and 500 home-grown innovations from laboratories into the marketplace.

The innovations will headline the 2026 TETFund National Research Fair and Exhibition, scheduled for November 24 to 27 at the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry Trade Fair Complex, along Airport Road.

The Chairman of the Organising Committee, Mr. Umar Bindir, said the fair is no longer about showcasing academic brilliance, but about creating businesses, jobs and wealth from Nigerian knowledge.

“We are actually working. And the working is what will now change Nigeria from a country that is energized with knowledge but consuming other people’s products to a country that is energized technically, that is actually feeding other countries,” Bindir said.

Speaking during the committee’s meeting on Thursday in Abuja, Bindir disclosed that between 4,000 and 5,000 applications were received from universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, research institutions and private inventors across the country.

Only innovations that had attained a reasonable level of development and demonstrated practical, commercial potential survived the screening.

“We have gotten an average of 350 to 400 nationwide from everywhere,” he said. “We deliberately avoided projects that were still at the preliminary research stage or lacked the functionality required for practical application.”

The selected innovations cut across agriculture, healthcare, sanitation, housing, clothing and other critical sectors where Bindir said Nigerian research could directly change the country’s course.

“So that we can be able to bring this on the table for Nigerians to see the power of knowledge and the outputs of our knowledge institutions that can help our country to change its course to become great,” he said.

To ensure the ideas do not die after exhibition, TETFund is bringing the full business ecosystem to the fair: banks, investors, industries, business development experts and intellectual property lawyers.

IP experts in patents, trademarks and industrial designs will offer free services to help innovators protect their inventions, while business experts will guide them on formation, standardisation, registration and scaling for local and international markets.

Bindir said the missing link for most Nigerian inventors was not talent, but funding and business expertise.

“Inventors often possessed technical ideas but lacked the financial resources and business expertise to commercialise them,” he said. “We are bringing together banks, investors, industries and relevant government agencies to bridge the gap.”

The strategy is already yielding results. From the previous edition, between 30 and 40 innovations have reached an advanced stage and are undergoing commercialisation-related activities, while many others are in what Bindir called “halfway houses” — needing further support in business development and product standardisation.

“Yes, we have like 30 to 40 of these matured ones that are actually ongoing. But there are many also that have gone to what we call halfway houses,” he said.

He said TETFund’s partnership with Innovat8 Hub is working to push those intermediate innovations closer to the market.

The previous fair introduced a deal-room that matched inventors directly with financiers. The 2026 edition will go further, involving the business community directly in planning so that Nigerian businesses do not merely observe, but identify, adopt and fund technologies with commercial potential.

The fair will also feature an international symposium starting November 25, with participants from China, India, Canada and Japan, as well as the World Bank, UNESCO and the African Development Bank (AfDB). A Japanese expert is expected to deliver the keynote address.

Bindir said the international component would expose Nigerian innovators to global standards, open opportunities for knowledge exchange and showcase the country’s research capabilities to the world.

He said ministers, state governors, heads of government institutions and other stakeholders have been invited to attend and explore the innovations on display.

He commended TETFund’s Executive Secretary, Mr. Sonny Echono, for providing the administrative and logistical support that has minimised the challenges of organising the national event.