Federal government has signed a concession agreement for the deployment of a contactless biometric passenger verification system across Nigeria’s domestic airports.

The initiative, known as VPASS, is designed to strengthen aviation security, improve data integrity and boost revenue generation.

Festus Keyamo, minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, said the agreement followed the concurrence of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, the Attorney-General of the Federation and approval by the Federal Executive Council.

Keyamo said the system will eliminate discrepancies in passenger records, curb unauthorized boarding and ensure all domestic air travellers are properly identified, closing existing gaps in standard identification procedures.

Association of Licensed Set-Top Box Manufacturers of Nigeria (STBMAN) has waxed worriedly over the National Broadcasting Commission’s (NBC) repeated violations of due process in managing the country’s Digital Switch Over (DSO) project.

In a statement released in Abuja, Sir Godfrey Ohuabunwa, chairman,  STBMAN, stated that the NBC’s actions are slowing down Nigeria’s transition from analogue to digital broadcasting and discouraging local investors who have committed resources to the project.

Ohuabunwa noted that Nigeria began serious discussions on DSO in 2008, yet 17 years later, the country has made little progress, while nations that once sought Nigeria’s assistance have completed their own transitions.

“STBMAN has repeatedly called for the protection of local manufacturers, strict compliance with the federal government’s White Paper on DSO, and full respect for the rule of law, but these calls have been ignored,” Ohuabunwa said.

The NBC’s alleged plan to import hybrid set-top boxes from China has been criticized by STBMAN, which says this move disregards the heavy investments already made by licensed Nigerian manufacturers and contradicts the President’s directive to prioritize locally made products.

“The manufacturers have invested in equipment, technology upgrades, and workforce training, expecting government support and policy stability,”he added.

PowerLabs aims to expand its platform into Nigeria’s most energy-intensive sectors with the new funding. Providing hospitals and industrial hubs with the intelligent, automated control required to ensure continuous power and operational resilience.

PowerLabs, a Nigerian energy and climate-tech startup, announced the successful close of its pre-seed funding round led by Breega, with participation from Catalyst Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures, and Kaleo Ventures.

This strategic investment will accelerate the rollout of Pai Enterprise, the company’s flagship AI-enabled energy orchestration platform across commercial and industrial enterprises in Nigeria and lay the foundation for expansion into key West African markets

For decades, Nigerian energy management has centered on basic monitoring and tracking of energy consumption. Yet for the millions of businesses dealing with unreliable power grids, diesel generators, rooftop solar, inverters, and battery banks working together to keep operations running, visibility alone delivers no real value unless it leads to resilience and continuity.

The manufacturing sector alone spent ₦1.11 trillion on alternative energy sources in 2024, which is a 42% increase from the year before. A small factory changes its work hours based on when it can get generator fuel. To keep critical care going, a hospital coordinates backup systems.

Every day, the facility team of a commercial building has to make dozens of decisions about reactive energy. Monitoring tools already in use tell you what went wrong, but they do not provide solutions or preventive measures to address the issues identified.

Pai Enterprise changes that equation. Unlike conventional dashboards, Pai Enterprise does not simply observe; it senses, communicates, and actuates across multiple distributed energy sources in real time. By continuously modelling supply, demand, and operational constraints, the platform enables organizations to run their own intelligent microgrid. As a result, the platform transforms energy from a reactive problem into a proactive, strategic resource.

This vision of a self-optimizing energy ecosystem was recently highlighted in a feature that explored how PowerLabs wants to make Nigeria’s grid think by shifting the paradigm from passive consumption to active, intelligent orchestration.

The measurable impact spans Nigeria’s most critical sectors:

• Hospitals: With intelligent monitoring across critical circuits, teams are instantly notified when there are fluctuations in supply, voltage drops, or automatic transitions to backup systems. This real-time visibility ensures that departments like intensive care, laboratories, and operating theatres remain protected, enabling faster response, reduced risk of disruption, and continued patient care.
• Data Centres: By providing continuous insight into the performance of energy assets such as solar systems and generators, operators can track efficiency, optimize usage, and reduce emissions without compromising uptime. The result is a more sustainable infrastructure that still meets the uncompromising reliability standards required for digital operations.
• Factories: Factories require more than just stable power, they need actionable intelligence to drive performance and profitability. Through detailed energy analytics, operators can identify inefficiencies, understand consumption patterns across production lines, and make informed decisions that reduce costs while maintaining output. This transforms energy from a fixed expense into a controllable lever for operational efficiency.
• Retail outlets: By analyzing consumption trends and usage behavior, retail outlets can right-size their energy assets, avoiding overinvestment while ensuring sufficient supply during peak periods. This leads to lower operating costs and improved energy efficiency across single or multi-site retail operations.
• Critical facilities: For critical facilities such as telecom towers, banks, schools etc, uninterrupted operations depend on anticipating issues before they occur. Continuous real-time monitoring enables early detection of anomalies and supports predictive maintenance strategies, reducing downtime and extending asset lifespan.

Tobe, CEO & Co-Founder, PowerLabs said: “Distributed energy resources are often seen as fragmented and chaotic, a clutter of devices that don’t speak the same language. At PowerLabs, we believe decentralization doesn’t have to mean disorder. We’re building the intelligence layer that will prove that distributed energy resources can operate as a unified source while leveraging its disaggregation to offer flexibility, cost efficiency, carbon neutrality and redundancy … more than a centralised energy system ever could. “

PowerLabs will strategically deploy the raised capital to accelerate the rollout of its flagship Pai Enterprise platform, improve its cutting-edge predictive load-management algorithms, and broaden seamless integration with distributed energy assets ranging from rooftop solar and battery storage systems to traditional grid infrastructure.

This funding round brings together a mix of global and Africa-focused investment partners with deep commitment to climate-tech and a proven track record of scaling innovation in emerging markets, all aligned on PowerLabs’ mission to solve energy resilience.

 Breega is an international fund investing in digital, climatech, and deeptech companies across Europe and Africa. Mercy Corps Ventures backs market-systems solutions in fragile and frontier markets; Catalyst Fund, a leading climate-tech investor backing solutions for climate adaptation and resilience in Africa. Kaleo Ventures specializes in early-stage technology companies across high-growth African markets. With their support, PowerLabs is now positioned to scale its intelligent energy solutions, expand Pai Enterprise across sectors and geographies, and demonstrate that the era of traditional energy management is over. Personalized, decentralized, resilient, and intelligent systems are the future, and for millions of people and organizations, that future is already here.

Tosin Faniro-Dada, Partner, Breega, stated that: “We backed PowerLabs at the pre-seed stage because we believe intelligent orchestration will be essential to solving Africa’s energy reliability challenge. The team is building the software and hardware layer that enables businesses to coordinate multiple distributed energy sources in real time. We’re excited to support them as they prove the impact of this model across critical sectors over the next 12–18 months. 

The closing of this investment round is therefore more than a financial milestone: it is a signal that investors, businesses recognize the need for energy systems that do not merely report, but act; that do not assume stability, but adapt in real time; and that view energy not as a static commodity, but as a platform for growth, resilience, and human potential.

“Globally, more and more businesses and critical services like data centers operate in complex energy environments where a mix of energy sources must work together. The energy users typically have to toggle between cost, quality of supply and carbon footprint. PowerLabs is starting in Africa to build the intelligence to orchestrate these systems seamlessly without sacrificing any of these critical factors.” Olúwátóyìn Emmanuel-Olúbákè, Chief Investment Officer, Catalyst Fund

Energy management alone is not enough, and for millions of users who have long struggled with outages, unreliable grids, and fragmented infrastructure, the promise of intelligent energy is not merely convenience; it is the key to unlocking their full potential and powering a new era of human progress.