Dr. Obichi Obiajunwa has strengthened his reputation as one of Africa’s foremost innovation enablers following his recognition as Ecosystem Startup Coach of the Year at the 2025 Africa Startup Ecosystem Builders Summit and Awards (ASEB), held in Addis Ababa from November 15 to 17.
The annual summit, widely regarded as one of the continent’s leading platforms for honouring those shaping entrepreneurial ecosystems, received over 2,600 nominations from 52 countries,demonstrating a rising acknowledgment of ecosystem builders whose work fuels enterprise development but is often unseen.
Dr. Obiajunwa, Founder of Hutzpa Innovation Consulting and President of the Young Innovation Leaders (YIL) Fellowship, earned the award for his long-standing contribution to innovation education, startup leadership, research commercialisation, and ecosystem strengthening across Africa.
Over the last eight years, he has coached and mentored more than 5,000 innovators across 30 African countries, delivering impact through eight major programmes, four of which he personally built.
His work cuts across innovation leadership, venture development, capacity building, and the translation of research into market-ready products, areas that increasingly define Africa’s economic competitiveness.His footprint includes roles in some of the continent’s most significant innovation and research initiatives.
As Chief Facilitator of TETFund’s Research for Impact (R4i) Programme, he supports academics in converting scholarly output into commercially viable solutions. He also designed and facilitates WIPO Nigeria’s IP SALAYE Programme, which equips National Youth Service Corps members with business-building skills rooted in intellectual property education, an initiative that combines youth development with enterprise literacy.
Dr. Obiajunwa further founded Obichi PitchLab, a venture platform enabling students and early-career researchers to transform ideas into commercial ventures.
His leadership also extended to international collaboration when he served as the pioneer Programme Manager of Israel’s Innovation Fellowship for Aspiring Inventors and Researchers (I-FAIR) in Nigeria, helping prototype early-stage technologies across sectors.
These contributions are timely given Africa’s rapidly expanding innovation ecosystem. Reports from organisations like AfriLabs, the African Development Bank, and Partech Africa highlight increasing startup activity, accelerating investment flows, and a demographic edge driven by the world’s youngest population. Yet they also reveal gaps, particularly in founder readiness, research translation, innovation management, and mentorship. Figures like Dr. Obiajunwa are emerging as key actors bridging these gaps by strengthening the systems that help founders thrive.
His win underscores a broader shift in how Africa values knowledge builders, programme architects, and research-to-impact practitioners.
Nigeria, already recognised as one of the continent’s most active startup hubs, continues to produce influential founders but his recognition spotlights another class of nation-shapers: those who build the structures, skills, networks, and mindsets that enable innovation ecosystems to flourish.
The ASEB Award therefore represents more than personal achievement. It signals continental appreciation for ecosystem leadership and highlights the growing recognition that Africa’s future will depend not only on brilliant startups but also on the architects who develop talent, scale innovation capacity, and build pathways for research uptake and commercialisation.
Dr. Obiajunwa’s journey suggests that Africa’s progress will be accelerated from within, through people who teach, support, formalise, and elevate the next generation of innovators.
His milestone serves as encouragement to emerging ecosystem builders and young Africans aspiring to lead change: innovation flourishes where enabling structures exist, and those who build them are now receiving their place on the continental stage.
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