A new book by Adesoji Adesugba, From Laboratory to Marketplace: Bridging Industry and Academia for Innovation-Led Development, with Lessons for Nigeria and Africa, sets out why Nigerian research rarely becomes commercial products, and what can be done about it.
Reviewed by Dr Tinuke Temitope, Deputy Director General of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), the 2026 book is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. The foreword is by Engr. Umar Buba Bindir, PhD.
Temitope notes that Nigerian universities and research institutes produce thousands of theses, papers and prototypes every year, while the country continues to import machinery, medicines, processed foods and technologies its own scientists could have helped develop.
Author’s background
Adesugba has worked at the Nigeria Customs Service, the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, the Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), which he led. He now works in the organised private sector and teaches at a university. Bindir says in the foreword that he has “lived in all three strands of the triple helix” of government, industry and academia.
What the book covers
The book has five parts. The first explains the problem, including the “valley of death” where inventions fail between the laboratory and the first customer. The second reviews global models: the American system of university patenting and venture capital, Germany’s Fraunhofer institutes, the developmental states of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, and emerging economies such as Brazil, Morocco and Ethiopia. Each comparison ends with an assessment of what Nigeria can and cannot adopt.
The third part focuses on Nigeria. It pulls together evidence on research spending, patents, institutions, laws and finance, and identifies the barriers holding research back. These include promotion systems that reward publications over practical use, unclear ownership of inventions, weak intermediaries, firms with little capacity to absorb new technology, and the absence of any single body responsible for seeing an idea through.
The fourth part looks at technology transfer, intellectual property and financing for the riskiest stages of development. The fifth sets out a ten-year road map.
Nigerian case studies
The book opens with a proposal Adesugba received as NEPZA head to turn the University of Abuja into a knowledge-based free zone. The idea drew no opposition but lapsed because no institution owned the final decision.
It also examines Niprisan, the sickle-cell medicine developed from traditional knowledge by the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD). The drug stalled for lack of a capable industrial partner, and a second licence helped revive it.
Other examples include the TETFund National Research Fair, the TETFund/NACCIMA partnership, GenMRI, the software for faster MRI scanning that won the 2026 Nigeria Prize, and a refinery catalyst developed at Ahmadu Bello University from Nigerian kaolin, for which the Dangote refinery is seen as the natural first customer.
Drawing on his years at the ports, Adesugba recounts watching fully built machinery come off ships at Apapa and Tin Can Island, and factories in Asia running processes that Nigerian workers could easily have mastered.
Practical tools
The book includes a model university intellectual property policy, an invention disclosure form, a licence term sheet, a worked valuation of a Nigerian technology, and a proposed financing facility with five funding windows for the “valley of death”.
It also proposes a national network of research-to-commercialisation hubs modelled on Brazil’s EMBRAPII, in which public funders, industry and universities share the cost of every project.
The road map assigns each reform a lead institution, timetable, indicative costs and a risk register. It also includes a fallback route for reforms that can start under existing laws and institutions, even if the proposed National Research and Development Fund is delayed.
Temitope said she was particularly pleased by the book’s emphasis on people: graduates placed in firms, trained technology transfer professionals, protected research time, and young Nigerian researchers at home and abroad.
Limitations
The reviewer notes that Nigeria’s data on research outcomes are thin and often dated, so some of the evidence is provisional. The account of what became of past Nigeria Prize-winning works relies on public records rather than the inventors, and the author invites corrections for a second edition.
She also notes that Adesugba holds positions in several institutions discussed in the book, including the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and the TETFund/NACCIMA Joint Technical Committee. He declares these interests, and his assessments of the institutions are not uncritical.
Finally, the road map depends heavily on political continuity and on a funding commitment that has not yet been enacted.
Verdict
Temitope calls the book the most comprehensive and most practical treatment she knows of the gap between Nigerian research and enterprise, written in clear prose without jargon. She recommends it to policymakers, legislators, university and research leaders, investors, industrialists and young researchers.
“The knowledge is there, the talent is there, and the market is there. What remains is to build the connection,” she said, summarising the book’s message.
Disclosure: Temitope works with the author at the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry, where she heads the ACCI Business Entrepreneurship, Skills and Technology (BEST) Centre.
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