Africa Innovates to Address Challenging Issues on the World's Product Day in 2025
World Product Day 2025: Empowering Innovative Solutions for Africa's Challenges
On Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Lagos, Nigeria will play host to the World Product Day 2025, an event organised by Innovate Africa. This year's theme, Bold Builders Wanted, reflects the initiative's focus on finding innovative solutions to Africa's most pressing issues.
Launched in 2024, Innovate Africa aims to back empathetic, execution-driven builders with early-stage support and capital. The event will tackle 12 major challenges across various sectors such as health, climate, and infrastructure.
The day-long conference will commence with multidisciplinary teams pitching prototype-ready solutions to these identified challenges. The top 5 teams will compete for a $2,000 grand prize and post-event support to help scale their ventures.
In the lead-up to the event, participants submitted their ideas during the March Ideathon. Multidisciplinary teams were then formed in April to develop these ideas into prototypes. The finalist teams were selected to pitch live at the Lagos event. These teams may also receive incubation, mentoring, and other post-event support designed to transform early-stage ideas into scalable ventures.
Throughout the day, attendees can expect workshops, panels, and firesides, as well as a Product Career Fair. The event will connect product builders, engineers, founders, and enterprise teams through thought leadership, practical learning, and talent engagement.
Speakers at the event include Mustapha Otaru (Sterling Bank), Andrew Obuoforibo (54 Collective), and Isma'il Shomala (Go Money). Kristin H. Wilson, Managing Partner at Innovate Africa Fund, will also be present. She expressed, "Too many of Africa's wicked problems are still meeting surface solutions... We need builders who lead with empathy and a bias for execution."
The event is expected to have approximately 250 curated participants. Registration for World Product Day 2025 can be done at lu.ma/jnjimijz.
Innovate Africa offers product leadership training to the ventures they invest in and provides access to programs such as the Silicon Valley Product Group. The organisation is part of the global World Product Day movement by Mind the Product, curated locally by Innovate Africa to stimulate bold, early-stage innovation across the continent.
Join us in Lagos on May 21, 2025, as we bring together Africa's brightest minds to tackle its most complex and urgent challenges through product innovation.
- Innovate Africa's focus on finding solutions to Africa's most pressing issues transcends various sectors, including finance, business, technology, and education-and-self-development.
- The Product Career Fair at the World Product Day 2025 will connect product builders, engineers, founders, and enterprise teams, fostering collaboration and exchange of ideas in finance, business, technology, and education-and-self-development.
