NASENI To Begin FutureMakers Virtual Hackathon, Pitch Sessions

The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) will on Monday kick-start the FutureMakers by NASENI Virtual Hackathon and Pitch sessions for 60 participants drawn from all six geopolitical zones of the country.

A statement issued on Sunday by the deputy director of Information, Chima Akwaja,  said the programme organised by NASENI Innovation Hub will hold the Virtual Hackathon from Monday, 17 August to Friday, 21 August 2026, while the pitch sessions will take place from Monday, 24 August to Wednesday, 26 August, 2026. The pitch sessions will be streamed live on YouTube and Facebook.

“The virtual hackathon, a five-day virtual build sprint, will see 60 shortlisted innovators selected from thousands of entries received in the competition, develop working solutions against their zone’s challenge statement, supported by technical facilitators and mentors. Innovators that advance from the hackathon progress to the Pitch Sessions,” the statement said.

On the other hand, the pitch sessions will see advancing innovators present their solutions to a panel of judges and industry leaders, and will be streamed live on YouTube and Facebook. Winners from each zone will win N1.5 million, N1 million and N500,000 each, respectively.

Also, the top six winners from each zone will pitch at the NASENI Invention Fest, and stand a chance to win N5 million, a study tour abroad, and scholarships to two leading universities in Nigeria fully funded.

The executive vice chairman and CEO of NASENI, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, said, “FutureMakers Week is the culminating moment of the programme cycle, where months of outreach and selection turn into built solutions and backed ventures. Sixty innovators, six zones, six challenges: the programme is deliberately national in reach and local in problem definition.”

The Hub Manager, NASENI Innovation Hub, Busola Beckley Perez-Folayan, says, “This talent pipeline is not a one-off competition. Winners gain SparkLab access, mentorship, training and scholarship pathways alongside the ₦5,000,000 prize. The virtual format widens access to innovators beyond Abuja and Lagos. This is a working demonstration of government-backed innovation infrastructure delivering for young Nigerians,” she adds.

The programme sits within NASENI’s mandate to move Nigeria from a consumer economy to a producer economy. Its defining feature is a zone-by-zone design: each of the six geopolitical zones works on a challenge drawn from its own lived reality, rather than a single national brief.

FutureMakers by NASENI is delivered in collaboration with academic and ecosystem partners including MIVA Open University and the African University of Science and Technology (AUST), Abuja. The NASENI Innovation Hub is a member of the AfriLabs network.

Launched on December 11, 2026, FutureMakers by NASENI identifies, equips and backs early-stage Nigerian innovators aged 5 – 16, building technology-driven solutions to the development challenges facing their own regions, and connects them to NASENI’s engineering, prototyping and commercialisation infrastructure, the statement added.