How NASENI’s FutureMakers Is Betting Nigeria’s Innovation Future on Its Children

Nigeria’s struggle to build a sustainable innovation economy has often been framed around funding gaps, weak infrastructure, policy inconsistencies and the brain drain of skilled professionals. Far less attention has been paid to a more fundamental question: where do innovators actually come from? At what point does a child begin to see technology not as something imported and distant, but as something they can shape with their own hands and ideas?

The FutureMakers programme recently launched by the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, NASENI, is built around a bold answer to that question: innovation does not start at university, and it certainly does not start at the factory floor. It starts in childhood.

FutureMakers by NASENI is a deliberate attempt to intervene early in the lives of Nigerian children, targeting those between the ages of five and 16 and exposing them to creativity, design thinking, problem-solving and basic technological skills at a stage when curiosity is still natural and fear of failure has not yet taken root.

It is a programme that challenges long-held assumptions about when serious innovation training should begin, and it reflects a growing realisation within government that Nigeria’s long-term industrial and technological ambitions will remain fragile unless they are anchored in early human capital development.

The logic behind FutureMakers is not difficult to grasp. Around the world, countries that dominate science, technology and innovation today did not stumble into success. They invested deliberately in their young people decades earlier. In the United States, programmes like FIRST Robotics introduced children to engineering and teamwork long before career decisions were made.

India’s Atal Innovation Mission embedded design thinking and problem-solving in schools, helping to build a pipeline that now feeds its fast-growing startup ecosystem. In the United Kingdom, initiatives such as TeenTech created early pathways into science and engineering careers. The common lesson is simple but powerful: early exposure shapes confidence, ambition and lifelong capability.

By launching FutureMakers, Nigeria is attempting to apply that lesson within its own context. The programme is designed as a flagship initiative of the NASENI Innovation Hub and aligns closely with the agency’s broader mandate of driving national development through creation, collaboration and commercialisation of science and engineering solutions.

For NASENI, FutureMakers is not a stand-alone project or a public relations exercise; it is intended as a foundational layer in a long-term national strategy to strengthen Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem from the ground up.

Speaking at the launch, NASENI’s Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, made it clear that the agency views the programme as an investment whose returns may only become fully visible decades from now. According to him, if Nigeria wants to remain competitive in a world increasingly shaped by technology and innovation, it must begin preparing its innovators early.

FutureMakers, he said, is part of a deliberate effort to secure Nigeria’s innovation stability over the next 30 to 50 years by building technical confidence, creativity and problem-solving skills at a young age. What makes the FutureMakers story particularly compelling, however, is that it is not driven only by abstract policy thinking. It is deeply rooted in lived experience.

In his goodwill message, the Chairman, Senate Committee on NASENI, Senator Francis Ezenwa Onyewuchi commended the Agency for the initiative and thanked the mentors, teachers, parents and partners supporting the vision for standing behind the young talents.

“As we launch FutureMakers, let us renew our collective commitment to building a nation, where creativity is elevated, where ideas are supported and where the potential of every child is allowed to thrive. I believe that what we are doing today will inspire a new generation of young ones,” the lawmaker said.

One of the most striking moments at the launch came from Engr. Dr. Anas Balarabe Yazid, Special Adviser to the EVC on Commercialisation and Efficiency, who traced his own journey back to a single opportunity he received as a secondary school student in 1997. At the time, a simple decision by his school principal to nominate him for a computer bootcamp opened his eyes to the world of technology and possibility.

That one-week exposure, he told the audience, became the foundation upon which his academic and professional life was built, eventually leading him to international scholarships, advanced research and a role in shaping Nigeria’s technology transfer agenda. His story serves as a powerful reminder that innovation trajectories are often shaped by small but timely interventions.

A single programme, a single mentor or a single moment of exposure can alter the direction of a young person’s life. FutureMakers is, in essence, an attempt to institutionalise such moments at scale, replacing chance with structure and making opportunity less dependent on geography, background or personal connections. The structure of the programme reflects this ambition.

FutureMakers will run initially as a pilot over a three-month period, from December 2025 to February 2026, drawing participants from across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. In its first phase, 60 children, ten from each geopolitical zone, will be selected to participate in a design thinking hackathon where they will be guided to identify problems within their communities and develop prototype solutions.

The hackathon phase, lasting one intensive week in each zone, will culminate in pitching sessions where participants present their ideas before panels using clearly defined evaluation criteria. Yet the programme is deliberately designed to go beyond competition. While prizes and recognition are important motivators, NASENI has placed strong emphasis on continuity and development after the hackathon stage.

Top performers from each zone will advance to a national showcase during NASENI Week, where the best ideas will be recognised at the national level. More importantly, winning participants will be connected to mentorship opportunities, incubation pathways within NASENI’s innovation hubs and further support to refine and develop their ideas into viable products.

The incentives attached to the programme are also significant. In addition to prizes running into millions of naira, top participants will have access to scholarships and international study tours to leading innovation institutions abroad. These experiences are intended not only to reward excellence but also to broaden horizons, exposing young Nigerians to global best practices and reinforcing the belief that their ideas can compete on an international stage.

For the head, NASENI Innovation Hub, Mrs. Rachael Oluwabusola Perez-Folayan, FutureMakers represents a shift in how innovation is taught and experienced. She explained that the programme is built around experiential learning, combining creativity, engineering basics and technology use with mentorship and access to prototyping tools.

In a system where education is often rigid and examination-driven, such an approach stands out. It encourages children to ask questions, experiment freely and learn from mistakes, skills that are essential for innovation but often discouraged in conventional classrooms.

Beyond its immediate beneficiaries, FutureMakers carries broader implications for Nigeria’s development discourse. For years, the country’s youthful population has been described as a potential demographic dividend. Yet potential alone does not translate into productivity or innovation. Without deliberate investment in skills, mindset and opportunity, a large youth population can just as easily become a source of social and economic pressure.

By focusing on children rather than waiting until adolescence or adulthood, FutureMakers is pushing the conversation upstream, recognising that attitudes towards creativity and problem-solving are formed early on. The programme also sends an important signal about the evolving role of government agencies like NASENI.

Traditionally associated with heavy engineering and industrial infrastructure, NASENI is redefining its understanding of infrastructure to include human capital. Roads, machines and factories remain important, but without skilled and creative people to design, operate and improve them, such infrastructure cannot deliver sustainable development. By investing in children’s innovation capacity, NASENI is effectively laying the groundwork for the technologies and industries of the future.

At the launch, calls were made to parents, teachers and the private sector to see FutureMakers as a shared responsibility. Parents were urged to encourage curiosity rather than suppress it, to allow children explore ideas even when they seem unconventional. Teachers were challenged to integrate creativity and innovation into everyday learning, not as occasional extracurricular activities but as core elements of education.

Private sector players were invited to invest in the programme by sponsoring challenges, funding prototypes and supporting regional hubs, recognising that today’s FutureMakers could become tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, engineers and industry leaders. For the children themselves, the significance of the programme may not yet be fully clear. To many, it may feel like just another holiday camp or school activity.

However, as Dr. Yazid reminded them, some of the most important moments in life only reveal their meaning in hindsight. Years from now, some of these participants may look back and trace their confidence, careers and contributions to society to this early exposure to innovation and belief in their abilities.

Furthermore, FutureMakers by NASENI represents more than a programme launch. It is a statement about the kind of future Nigeria wants to build and the path it believes will get it there. It acknowledges that innovation is not an accident and that global competitiveness is not achieved through declarations alone. It is built patiently, by investing in people early, nurturing their ideas and giving them the tools and confidence to create solutions to real problems.

By knocking on the doors of Nigerian children across cities, towns and villages, FutureMakers is offering something that has long been in short supply: structured opportunity at an early age. Its underlying idea is difficult to fault. If Nigeria is serious about shaping its technological and industrial future, then betting on its children may be the smartest place to start.

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