No fewer than 23 young innovators and tech firms have been awarded a grant of N100m by the Lagos State Government.
According to a statement on Wednesday, the grant is to pursue various technology-driven innovations across the six pillars of the development agenda of the Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration.
The recipients, the state said, were the first set of beneficiaries to be picked to benefit from the N250m seed capital earmarked last year as Research and Innovation Fund by the state government.
The awardees were reportedly selected through a highly competitive process overseen by the Lagos State Science Research and Innovation Council (LASRIC), an agency established in 2019 to encourage the development of innovative solutions to local problems.
Sanwo-Olu congratulated the successful awardees of the research funds, urging them to apply the grant judiciously.
He said, “As a government, we believe in each and every applicant’s capacity to create and scale up ideas that can proffer solutions to our current challenges.
“We embarked on this unique project with the belief that local challenges are best solved by thinking that understands and appreciates local contexts and peculiarities. We believe in Lagos-supported solutions for Lagos-specific challenges. With the presentation of the grants, the responsibility now firmly rests on the recipients’ shoulders to justify the opportunity.”
The LASRIC Chairman, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, said the council would continue to assist the state government to harness human and material resources of Lagos for problem solving, wealth creation and transformation of the state’s economy.