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.

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.

Following a call for applications in January 2026 and a rigorous selection process that drew over 9,000 applications from across the country, Moniepoint Inc., Africa’s leading digital financial services provider, has officially commenced the bootcamp for the second cohort of its flagship DreamDevs initiative aimed at bridging the tech talent gap in Africa by equipping recent graduates with industry-ready skills and real-world experience.

The initiative brings together 20 high-potential engineering graduates for an intensive nine-week programme designed to accelerate their development into industry-ready engineers. It will be recalled that candidates, who are recent university graduates from technology, computer science, and engineering fields were invited to showcase their foundational knowledge in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The journey to the final 20 was marked by a multi-stage screening process designed to identify technical aptitude and learning potential. After the initial application review, candidates underwent an online HackerRank technical assessment. From this pool, 50 shortlisted applicants were invited to a physical code challenge, which determined the final participants selected to join the bootcamp.

“At Moniepoint, we believe that Africa’s tech talent can compete on any global stage if given the right environment. DreamDevs is our way of providing that bridge. We’ve seen the success of our first cohort, and this year we’re doubling down to not just to train, but to create a definitive pathway into full-time roles for those ready to engineer financial happiness across the continent.

DreamDevs is about building engineers who can think, solve problems, and contribute meaningfully to systems at scale. This bootcamp is where that journey begins,” said Felix Ike, Co-founder and CTO of Moniepoint Inc.

Delivered in partnership with Semicolon Africa, the bootcamp focuses on strengthening core engineering competencies through structured learning and real-world problem-solving. The curriculum is designed to move participants from foundational principles to production-grade software development, covering Java OOP foundations, data structures and algorithms, Spring Boot API development, and cloud infrastructure.

Participants will gain direct exposure to Moniepoint’s engineering environment, engaging with internal teams to understand how large-scale financial systems are built and maintained. Standout performers at the end of the nine weeks will secure six-month internship placements, with the strongest candidates eligible for full-time employment.

Wisdom Iyamu, one of the selected participants for the DreamDevs bootcamp expressed shock and appreciation.

“I was honestly shocked when I received the acceptance for the first stage. I have many friends who are equally talented and didn’t make it in, so I feel incredibly grateful and excited to be here. I actually applied because a close friend of mine, who is a huge fan of Moniepoint, convinced me to go for it. My expectation for this bootcamp is to learn exactly how to build products that scale. Whether it’s working at Moniepoint or being part of a team building the next billion-dollar idea, I want to be where high-impact engineering happens”, Iyamu noted.

DreamDevs aligns with Moniepoint’s broader vision of using technology to power the dreams of millions and engineer financial happiness across Africa. It complements the company’s existing talent development programs, including HatchDev – a collaboration with NITHub Unilag and the popular Moniepoint Women-in-Tech initiative, now in its sixth year.

The programme also sits in tandem with the federal government’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) initiative, for which Moniepoint serves as a key sponsor. By providing a specialised pathway from foundational training to employment, Moniepoint continues to invest in the people who will drive Africa’s digital economy forward while serving as the backbone of Nigeria’s small businesses and enterprises to catalyze economic prosperity.