Lagos, Nigeria’s tech capital, is attempting to revamp how innovation occurs inside its borders, not simply how startups are funded. The proposed Lagos Innovation Invoice is the state’s most bold try but to do this, in keeping with Olatunbosun Alake, the state commissioner for Innovation, Science and Know-how.
Relatively than treating startups as remoted ventures that sometimes obtain assist, the invoice goals to construct an innovation pipeline the place concepts can transfer from analysis to experimentation and, ultimately, to market. The purpose, Alake says, is to make tertiary establishments, analysis establishments, personal firms, and founders right into a single system for problem-solving and authentic invention.
“It isn’t actually about cash or funding,” he informed TechCabal in an interview. “It’s about correct ecosystem constructing, you already know, bridging the hole between analysis and growth, the colleges, and international traders. It’s attempting to construct the entire ecosystem.”
Lagos is dwelling to over 900 startups, and funding to Nigerian startups, largely domiciled within the state, fell by 17% to $343 million in 2025. Regardless of this tightening of enterprise capital, the invoice is a shift in how the state thinks about innovation: away from episodic assist for startups and towards constructing the underlying constructions that make innovation repeatable and scalable.
To assist this imaginative and prescient, the invoice earmarks between 1.5% and a pair of% of the state’s annual capital expenditure for innovation. Whereas this provision attracts consideration to the funding Lagos-based startups may entry, Alake insists cash just isn’t the invoice’s core focus.
In accordance with Startupblink, a world startup ecosystem analysis centre, authorities insurance policies that concentrate on selective funding typically create dependency and misaligned incentives, whereas a broader, data-driven method fosters long-term progress.
“By prioritising ecosystem-wide enhancements, lowering bureaucratic boundaries, and selling innovation-friendly insurance policies, governments can create an setting the place startups thrive primarily based on market demand slightly than synthetic incentives,” the organisation famous in a report on the influence of presidency coverage on startups.
Below the invoice’s framework, innovation is supposed to start lengthy earlier than an organization is integrated. Universities are anticipated to perform as centres of experimentation, whereas personal firms are incentivised to spend money on analysis and undertake regionally developed options. Startups, on this framing, should not the place to begin of innovation however one among its outcomes.
The invoice’s funding provisions are designed as a part of a broader system slightly than standalone interventions.
Lagos-based startups may have had entry to no less than ₦35 billion ($24.61 million) in recent funding in 2026 after the state signed its ₦4.4 trillion ($3.09 billion) 2026 finances into legislation. The finances allocates ₦2.34 trillion ($1.65 billion) to capital expenditure and ₦2.11 trillion ($1.48 billion) to recurrent spending.
Making use of the invoice’s innovation allocation, that capital finances would have unlocked funding for grants, threat capital, and analysis assist. For Alake, even this scale of funding does little to handle the deeper difficulty his ministry is attempting to repair.
“The best drawback in our ecosystem just isn’t funding,” he mentioned. “It’s growth, the strains of connectivity, the pipeline of the ecosystem. Simply throwing cash on the similar state of affairs is not going to get us to a correct growth ethos. You must construct the complete pipeline.”
Lagos already operates the ₦1 billion ($703,200) Lagos State Science Analysis and Innovation Council (LASRIC) fund, which has disbursed ₦803 million ($564,670) to greater than 100 startups. However with out stronger connective constructions between analysis and trade, the state dangers persevering with a cycle the place startups are funded however not totally shaped, in keeping with Alake.
Below the proposed invoice, LASRIC could be consolidated right into a broader analysis, growth, and innovation (RD&I) fund, aligning public funding with longer-term analysis and commercialisation objectives.
Nonetheless, the invoice continues to be within the public assessment section, which was scheduled to run from June 15 to August 31, 2025. In accordance with a public tracker, the invoice nonetheless must move by the Lagos State Govt Council, the Home of Meeting committee assessment, and a full legislative debate and vote earlier than it may be signed into legislation.
“The invoice is at present being reviewed by tertiary establishments within the state and Lagos’s Ministry of Justice,” Alake mentioned.
The Ministry of Justice will codify the authorized and funding framework, whereas universities are anticipated to evaluate how they’ll adapt their constructions to assist research-led innovation.
“The best way universities suppose has to alter,” Alake mentioned. “Most startups needs to be coming from universities, so they should perceive the constructions required for this invoice to be efficient.”
The innovation fund has been within the works since 2024, when Lagos introduced plans to develop its personal model of the Nigeria Startup Act, tailor-made to the realities of innovation inside the state. Whereas timelines for the passage stay advanced, Alake informed The PUNCH, Nigeria’s most generally learn newspaper, in October 2025, “We’re concentrating on Q2 or Q3 subsequent yr for its passage.”
Past funding, the invoice proposes tax and financial incentives to encourage private-sector participation, sponsorship for doctoral and postdoctoral analysis, procurement preferences for native innovators, and a commercialisation programme.
About 20% of innovation grants could be reserved for women- and youth-led initiatives, with extra assist for returning founders and researchers from overseas.
Lagos’s Innovation Invoice paints an bold image, however its success will finally depend upon whether or not the state can overcome structural constraints past the invoice itself. Digital connectivity stays uneven, with community protection concentrated in city centres, limiting innovation to a handful of metropolis clusters.
Whereas Lagos has made progress by the Lagos State Infrastructure Upkeep and Regulatory Company (LASIMRA), which has laid over 6,000 km of metro fibre to shut the connectivity hole, a research-to-market pipeline can’t perform successfully if giant components of the state stay poorly linked.
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