Three years after Nigeria unveiled one of its most ambitious digital economy initiatives — a $618 million investment vehicle that promised to reshape the country’s startup landscape — the programme has made its first significant public grant commitment: ₦1 billion (approximately $729,000) in direct funding for early-stage founders.
The money will flow through iDICE Startup Bridge, a new sub-programme under the Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) initiative, which the Nigerian government launched at a high-profile event in Abuja on 14 March 2023. At its launch, iDICE attracted headlines for its scale — backed by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the French Development Agency, the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), and the Bank of Industry (BOI), and forecast to generate $6.4 billion in economic output and create six million jobs.
The gap between that announcement and this week’s grant disclosure illustrates how slowly large development-finance vehicles translate into founder-facing capital in Africa’s largest economy.
What the Programme Actually Offers
iDICE Startup Bridge runs two tracks. The first, Founders Lab, is a 12-week, largely self-paced programme aimed at idea-stage and prototype-stage founders who do not yet qualify for venture capital. At the end of each cohort, the top 100 founders will each receive a ₦10 million grant — totalling up to ₦1 billion per cohort. The programme will run two cohorts annually, targeting at least 250 startups in its first year.
The second track, Growth Lab, is expected to launch later in 2025 and offers a different deal: $100,000 in equity investment per selected startup, plus a $125,000 matching fund available to founders who complete the programme. Growth Lab is designed for ventures further along the development curve that need governance strengthening and help accessing follow-on capital.
The programme is administered through Ventures Platform, which also manages iDICE’s technology fund. That fund received a $64 million commitment from iDICE — a separate, earlier deployment that predates the Startup Bridge launch.
Cindy Ezerioha, Head of Startup School at iDICE Startup Bridge, framed the grant programme as pipeline infrastructure rather than a pure capital deployment exercise.
“It targets very early-stage ideas and founders who do not yet meet the thresholds of a venture fund. The goal is to develop a stronger pipeline of investable Nigerian startups — including for the iDICE technology fund itself — and to ensure founders from outside the major startup hubs have access to structured support,” she said.
During the 12-week programme, selected founders will work through problem validation, business structuring, and minimum viable product development. Ezerioha said selection criteria will weigh team capability, solution scalability, programme commitment, and how founders intend to deploy the funds. Participants will receive stipends to cover internet access and workspace costs, and the programme intends to work with hub operators across all geographies to improve regional and gender representation.
The programme will feature masterclasses from industry practitioners, including Sim Shagaya, the founder of Miva University and a veteran of Nigeria’s digital economy.
Startups that receive initial grant funding may access additional capital through a national pitch competition embedded in the programme structure.
The Gap Between Ambition and Deployment
The scale contrast is difficult to ignore. When AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina stood in Abuja in March 2023 to co-launch iDICE, he described it as a structural intervention — “retooling Nigeria to be more competitive in an increasingly digital world.” The $618 million figure cited at that launch was framed as total investment the initiative would mobilise across its lifetime, targeting more than 200 technology and creative startups directly and providing non-financial support to around 450 SMEs.
The ₦1 billion Founders Lab grant — worth roughly $729,000 at current exchange rates — is not a direct comparison to that $618 million figure, which includes development finance commitments, planned co-investments, and capital expected to flow from private sector partners over several years. But the gap reflects a pattern common to large multilateral-backed programmes in Africa: the period between announcement and meaningful capital deployment is long, and the first visible tranches are modest relative to the ambition stated at launch.
Vice President Kashim Shettima, who chairs the iDICE Steering Committee, issued a statement characterising the Startup Bridge as a genuine opportunity for young entrepreneurs to build or scale, expressing confidence in its ability to reshape early-stage enterprise development over time. iDICE also announced in November 2025 that it would establish two additional funds under the initiative, though details on those structures have not been made public.
Whether iDICE can convert its institutional architecture — a steering committee chaired by the vice president, four multilateral and national development finance backers, and a professional fund manager in Ventures Platform — into consistent, large-scale capital deployment for Nigerian founders remains the central question for the programme’s remaining years.
Applications for the iDICE Startup Bridge Founders Lab are currently open.