The National Board for Technology Incubation (NBTI) has intensified efforts to strengthen Africa’s intellectual property ecosystem, with the agency warning that African innovation must no longer remain trapped in laboratories, workshops and research institutions without protection or commercial value.
The Director-General/Chief Executive Officer of NBTI, Dr Kazeem Kolawole Raji, said strategic collaboration, knowledge exchange and stronger intellectual property (IP) systems were critical to transforming African ideas into businesses, jobs and wealth.
Raji stated this during an engagement with Mr Sand Mba Kalu and his partner from the Africa Intellectual Property Summit, where both sides explored opportunities for collaboration between NBTI and the Summit to strengthen the continent’s intellectual property ecosystem.
The meeting came as the Africa Intellectual Property Summit enters its sixth edition and continues to position itself as a major pan-African platform connecting governments, innovators, investors, knowledge institutions and other stakeholders around the protection, development and commercialisation of intellectual assets.
Raji stressed that creating innovative ideas was no longer enough, arguing that African innovators must be equipped to protect their inventions, develop them into marketable products and scale them into globally competitive enterprises.
The NBTI boss said stronger IP protection would enable innovators to convert intellectual assets into economic value while attracting investment, creating jobs and improving the competitiveness of African businesses in the global marketplace.
According to him, the continent can no longer afford a situation where African ideas are created locally but the economic benefits of those ideas are captured elsewhere because of weak protection, poor commercialisation structures or inadequate access to investment.
He said intellectual property protection remained a critical component of NBTI’s innovation-to-market strategy, particularly as the agency works to create an environment where research, creativity and technology can translate into commercially viable products and sustainable enterprises.
The engagement also highlighted the need for deeper partnerships between public institutions and platforms such as the Africa Intellectual Property Summit to bridge the gap between innovation and commercialisation.
The stakeholders agreed on the importance of ensuring that African intellectual assets are not merely generated but properly protected, developed, commercialised and scaled.
NBTI said such partnerships would help accelerate technology commercialisation and strengthen the continent’s capacity to compete in an increasingly knowledge-driven global economy.
The agency reaffirmed its commitment to building strategic partnerships capable of strengthening Africa’s innovation ecosystem and ensuring that African ideas generate tangible economic and social impact.
For NBTI, the emerging agenda is clear: Africa must move beyond celebrating innovation to protecting it, commercialising it and turning it into sustainable wealth.
