Lagos Innovates an initiative of the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) has expanded subsidised workspace support for startups.
It recently formally welcomed a new cohort of startup founders into both flagship programmes during the inaugural Lagos Innovates LaunchPad Orientation held at The Zone, Gbagada.
The initiative is positioning state interventions not merely as short-term hand-outs, but as a structured pipeline designed to take early-stage ventures from survival to venture-scale, international expansion, and institutional funding.
LSETF since 2018, has provided subsidised access to professional workspaces worth over N366 million across more than 57 innovation hubs in Lagos through its IdeaHub and Workspace Voucher programs.
Combined with the IdeaHub Programme, these interventions have supported over 1,200 startups across the state over the last decade.
The Workspace Voucher programs provides subsidized infrastructure in the form of shared and subsidised workspace access (covering 30 percent to 75 percent of co-working costs across more than 57 partner hubs to lower overhead costs of office space for early-stage founders. The total value distributed through this program since 2018 stands at over N366 million.
The IdeaHub, on the other hand, is an incubation and capacity building program which onboards early-stage founders into a structured incubation framework offering hands-on mentorship, legal, HR administrative support, and access to corporate and investor networks.
Its impact formally extended to over 1,200 startups supported over the last decade across both flagship schemes.
The event convened government officials, innovation ecosystem leaders, private sector partners, and emerging founders, signaling a renewed operational approach to founder support in the state.
The core focus is a shift from a transactional grant model to a long-term partnership model for startup incubation in Lagos State.Delivering the opening remarks on behalf of LSETF, Oyindamola Egbeyemi, director of Programmes and Coordination, framed the orientation as a strategic pivot in state-level startup engagement.
‘This is more than a welcome event. It reflects our commitment to support founders not as recipients of a one-time intervention, but as partners we journey with from the first idea to the first hire and beyond,’ Egbeyemi said.
The orientation marks the first time beneficiaries of both the IdeaHub and Workspace Voucher interventions have been brought together at the onset of their journey under a structured, unified onboarding framework. LSETF notes that the integrated model is designed to strengthen early-stage business foundations by combining infrastructure access with mentorship, corporate partnerships, and ecosystem integration.
The economic yield of this strategy was highlighted through returning alumni. Among them was Fatima Yusuf, founder of House of Zibima, a sustainable fashion enterprise turning plastic waste into footwear who leveraged the IdeaHub programme to scale operations into international markets. Similarly, Jeremiah Nwobodo, founder of health-tech venture Presibo Technologies, detailed how subsidized access to professional workspace via the voucher scheme provided the institutional credibility needed to secure hospital partnerships and investor backing.
For LSETF, these growth trajectories underscore a broader mandate: transitioning local tech and micro-enterprises from subsistence survival to venture scale, positioning Lagos-built solutions for global markets.
‘Lagos secures its place as Africa’s innovation capital by deliberately investing in its people, founder after founder and cohort after cohort,’ Egbeyemi added.
With the new cohort now fully integrated into the ecosystem, the agency’s primary focus shifts toward execution ensuring participating ventures build structural capacity, attract private capital, and drive high-value job creation across the state’s expanding digital economy.