“Your Matriculation Number Is Your Ticket In”: Babcock Opens Innovation Drive to All Students

By Onyelukachukwu M. O. Obata | The Babcock Torch

On April 21 and 22, Babcock University’s main auditorium filled with roughly 600 attendees on the first day and nearly as many on the second — investors, faculty, government officials, industry leaders, and students — for the inaugural AI & BIV Commercialisation Summit, a two-day event that doubled as the formal launch of the university’s innovation and ventures engine.

The message from Vice-Chancellor Prof. Afolarin Tunde Ojewole, delivered across both days and in an interview with The Babcock Torch after the summit’s close, was direct: the opportunity is open to everyone, and the only qualification required is a Babcock matriculation number.

“Just walk up to Babcock Innovation Ventures with your raw idea — uncouth, naked as it is,” Prof. Ojewole said. “Share it with some of our mentors, encouragers and lecturers, and we’ll begin to direct you from the very rudiments. Everyone is welcome. Just because you’re one of ours, we see greatness in you — and that idea of yours is meant for the world. Don’t die with it.”

What BIV is

Babcock Innovation & Ventures (BIV) is the university’s newly unified commercialisation body, succeeding two earlier institutional units: RIIC, the Research and Innovation Centre for Computing, and BEDC, the Babcock Entrepreneurship and Development Centre. Rather than replacing either, BIV integrates both under a single governance structure and a single mandate: to move ideas from research and concept through to funded, market-ready ventures.

The body operates two parallel tracks. The first is an institutional innovation lane, in which faculty research outputs are screened, validated, and packaged for licensing or spin-off. The second is a venture creation lane, in which student-led ideas and faculty ventures are incubated into investable companies through BIV’s accelerator programmes and a pilot fund of at least ₦100 million — drawn from a larger committed pool.

BIV’s eleven-member governing board is chaired by Prof. Ojewole and includes Dr. Raymond Okoro as Co-Chair, alongside faculty, researchers, and external advisors, including Arvind Ravishunkar, a Silicon Valley-based AI executive who serves as BIV’s Industry Tech Accelerator.

Day One: AI Awareness and a Historic Inauguration

The first day, themed AI Awareness Day, opened with an academic procession and the Vice-Chancellor’s presidential address before moving through a series of keynote sessions, faculty-led panel discussions, and department-specific breakout workshops on artificial intelligence across disciplines.

The centrepiece of Day 1 was the Grand Inauguration of the Babcock Innovation & Venture Hub — a ribbon cutting, charter unveiling, and MOU signing with industry partners, presided over by Prof. Ojewole alongside the Board of Trustees and guests of honour. The moment marked the formal, institutional beginning of BIV as an operational body.

The Special Guest of Honour was Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh SAN, the Honourable Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, who addressed the summit on Nigeria’s national innovation agenda. Other speakers on Day 1 included Nicky Verd, Digital Futurist and CEO of Thinkers360, who spoke on human value in an AI-driven world; Folawemi Ololade Umunna, Co-Founder of the Climate and Ecological Protection Initiative, on climate action and renewable energy; and Arvind Ravishunkar, on agentic AI and lessons from Silicon Valley. Bright Okeke, Startup Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services Africa, addressed how AWS is supporting the next generation of African tech companies.

The summit drew partners and sponsors, including Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, MTN Nigeria, Airtel, Access Bank, Flutterwave, Andela, and the National Information Technology Development Agency.

Day Two: Ideas Off The Ground

The second day shifted from awareness to activation. Where Day 1 built the case for AI and formally inaugurated the institution, Day 2 put ventures on stage.

Student-founded startups pitched before the assembled audience of investors, faculty, and guests. Among those showcased were Glass, a fintech infrastructure platform that helps communities and organisations collect, manage, and track payments digitally — replacing manual systems like spreadsheets and cash collections; Vivara, an AI-powered clinical simulation platform designed to give medical students and early-career clinicians practical experience through gamified virtual patient cases, built specifically for low and middle-income settings; MyCampusPal, an AI study companion offering 24/7 tutoring, custom quiz generation from course materials, and schedule management for university students; and MyTutorMe, an AI-powered academic support platform offering curriculum-aligned tutoring and predictive grade analytics.

Babcock Creators Network and The Babcock Torch were also among the initiatives formally presented at the summit.

Prof. Ojewole, in his interview with The Torch, pointed to the Day 2 showcases as a preview of what BIV intends to make routine. “There are some ideas that are being incubated, that will be fertilised, and you might even find some sponsorship for those ideas that are ready,” he said. “That will be like a foretaste and an encouragement for all the students and staff to know that it’s no longer business as usual — here we honour skills and ideas.”

The Vision

When asked what sparked the summit and what he hoped it would achieve, Prof. Ojewole framed the answer in terms of a fundamental shift in what a Babcock education is meant to produce.

“My intention as inspired is to create an ecosystem where every student and staff, and everyone connected to Babcock University has an encouragement — an enabling environment for their ideas to become commercialised, for those ideas to solve problems that people have in society,” he said.

He described the desired outcome not just as startup creation but as a reimagining of education itself. “It’s not about just receiving information, but taking something that you’ll take out there to change the world, beginning here and now.”

Among the changes he outlined: a pathway for students to register their businesses before graduation — a structural parallel, he said, to students who already qualify as chartered accountants before receiving their first degrees.

“Everyone will be growing on all sides,” Prof. Ojewole said. “Just because you’re connected to Babcock — your life will change, and your destiny is determined to be better.”

The next BIV event — the Startup Accelerator Cohort Launch and Investor Day — is scheduled for May 14 at the BIV Innovation Hub on campus. Applications for the July 2026 incubator cohort close May 31.

Disclosure: The Babcock Torch was among the initiatives showcased at the BIV Inaugural Innovation Summit.

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