By Chinenye Anuforo
Forty-five technology teams are competing in the sixth edition of Thrive in Tech in Lagos, with organisers and industry experts challenging young innovators to move beyond ideas and build solutions capable of creating real impact and becoming sustainable businesses.
The two-day technology and innovation event with the theme “Build for Impact,” opened on Friday, August 21, 2026, at GolfView Suites & Conference Centre, Ikeja, Lagos.
The event brings together technology professionals, innovators, engineers, product leaders, career seekers and aspiring tech professionals, with the first day dedicated to a hackathon and the second to talks, panel discussions, mentorship and networking.
According to the founder and convener of Thrive in Tech, Femi Ayilara, more than 100 teams initially registered for the hackathon, with 45 eventually selected to compete across eight innovation tracks.
Ayilara said the initiative, which began in 2020, was created to help people enter the technology industry, build their careers, and develop solutions to real-world problems.
“We are here to innovate. We had over 100 teams register for the hackathon,” he said.
He explained that Thrive in Tech was born after the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired partly by his own experience with mentorship.
“I’m a product of mentorship myself, and a group of friends and I came together to start Thrive in Tech in 2020,” he said.
The three top teams will receive ₦500,000, ₦300,000 and ₦200,000 respectively, while participants will also receive AWS credits and other technical support.
Ayilara said the total value of the prizes and support available to participants exceeds ₦1 million.
He, however, stressed that the organisers are looking beyond the cash prizes, with the goal of helping teams develop their ideas into viable products.
“Beyond the prize money, we want to support the teams and enable organisations to see value in what they have built,” he said.
He disclosed that QoreID has a dedicated track and intends to support participants in that track, while one of the partners is providing free hosting to help teams deploy their solutions.
According to him, all 45 teams that made it to the finale stand to benefit from the programme through vouchers, tools, and other opportunities to further develop their ideas.
The Chief Judge of the hackathon and Chief Technology Architect at ipNX Nigeria Limited, Oluwaseun Oluboyo, said the teams were working on real problems across different tracks.
He said the objective was not simply to see participants build technology but to ensure that their solutions could make a meaningful difference.
“We don’t just do things for the sake of doing them. We do things because they make a difference in society and in our world,” Oluboyo said.
He explained that he expected some of the solutions developed during the hackathon to eventually become commercial products capable of making measurable impact.
“My expectation is that some of the solutions that are built here today will actually go on to be real products and solutions out there, see the light of day, be commercialised and make a difference,” he said.
Oluboyo said ipNX decided to support the programme because of the potential of Nigerian innovators to develop solutions to local and wider African challenges.
“We see Nigeria’s ability, Nigeria’s potential to solve Nigerian problems and even African problems,” he said.
He also urged young Nigerians to look around them for problems that technology can solve, arguing that young people are particularly well positioned to develop solutions because they experience many of the challenges themselves.
For Akintola Taofeek, Head of Engineering and Payments Architect at Hydrogen and one of the hackathon judges, the ability to attract funding should not be the only measure of a successful startup.
He said the first question innovators should ask is whether their product is solving a genuine problem.
“Many people come up with products, but not all those products are scalable. Not all those products are solving problems,” Akintola said.
He explained that a product that solves a real problem and has a clear business model is more likely to attract funding and sustain itself.
Using agency banking as an example, he said a solution that helps underserved communities access financial services can generate revenue while solving a real problem.
But he warned that building a product alone doesn’t solve all the problems.
According to Akintola, founders also need people within their teams who understand business, compliance, risk management, marketing, and regulatory requirements.
He said some startups fail because they focus heavily on the product while neglecting the business and regulatory structures required to sustain it.
Meanwhile, Babatunde Ojumu, Director of Technical Solutions at SoftAlliance & Resources, said his organisation was supporting the programme through its cloud infrastructure offering.
Ojumu said the company had provided local hosting services for enterprise customers for years and was now making its infrastructure more accessible to smaller innovators.
He said SoftKloud would provide participating young developers with one month of free access to its platform, after which some services could cost as little as ₦10,000 monthly.
The initiative, he explained, would allow young innovators to host their solutions locally instead of spending scarce foreign exchange on international cloud platforms.
“We’re offering them like a month free. Come onto the platform. If you want to build, instead of going to spend your money on AWS, at least come and use ours,” he said.
Ojumu said the objective was to reduce infrastructure costs and give young innovators the opportunity to continue developing their products after the hackathon.
Beyond the annual event, Ayilara said Thrive in Tech has built an alumni network of about 5,000 people through its free training and mentorship programmes.
The organisation runs three-month training programmes in areas including software engineering, product management and cybersecurity, with participants connected to mentors who have at least seven years of industry experience.
Some participants, he said, have successfully changed careers and moved on to technology roles in different parts of the world.
Ayilara said the organisation also maintains an open-door policy and continues to support alumni after their training.
Some former participants, he added, have become part of the team helping to organise subsequent programmes.
He disclosed that Thrive in Tech plans to expand internationally, with its first United Kingdom edition expected to hold next year.
Artificial intelligence has emerged as a major component of this year’s hackathon, with Ayilara estimating that about 95 per cent of the ideas he had seen incorporated AI.
Participants are developing solutions across sectors including agriculture and healthcare.
Rather than viewing AI solely as a threat, Ayilara said African innovators should seize the opportunity to use the technology to accelerate development.
“Just like every other technological wave, the AI wave will bring changes. A lot of what we do will change, and many new opportunities will also be created,” he said.
He added that the challenge for Africans was to take advantage of the technology to build solutions instead of merely consuming products developed elsewhere.
The perspectives from the organisers, judges and technology partners point to a common message: the success of the hackathon will not be measured solely by who wins the cash prizes.
For Ayilara, the goal is to produce confident innovators capable of positioning Nigeria within the global technology ecosystem.
For Oluboyo, the focus is on turning ideas into commercial solutions that create measurable impact.
For Akintola, innovation must be backed by viability, scalability, security and sound business structures.
And for Ojumu, young developers need access to affordable infrastructure that allows them to keep building after the competition ends.
As the main Thrive in Tech event holds on Saturday, the organisers hope the ideas developed during the hackathon will move beyond the competition floor and become products capable of solving problems in Nigeria and across Africa.
Thrive in Tech 6.0 is supported by Vesla Group, ipNX Nigeria, Softbridge Digital Solutions, SoftKloud, QoreID, GuestEazy and n8n.
(The Sun)