Babcock varsity VC urges AI adoption, commercialisation of innovation

At Babcock University, we believe that Artificial Intelligence is not a force to be feared, but a powerful tool that can significantly improve our world and bolster the 21st-century economy. Our Vice Chancellor, Prof. Afolarin Ojewole, has made it clear that institutions that pride themselves on research must move beyond merely publishing findings. Instead, the focus must be on scaling up innovations and commercializing them to address pressing global challenges.

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The global innovation economy does not reward institutions for what they know; it rewards them for what they build, what they deploy, and what they bring to market.

The global innovation economy, as Professor Ojewole articulated, rewards tangible outcomes – what we build, deploy, and bring to market – rather than just accumulated knowledge. This perspective challenges traditional academic models, pushing universities to develop structured pathways for translating intellectual capital into ventures, products, and solutions that generate both economic and societal value. This is the core mission behind our new initiative.

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The question before every serious university today is not whether it has excellent faculty or rigorous curricula, those are necessary conditions, not sufficient ones.

This is why Babcock University is not just launching another entrepreneurship seminar. We are activating an institutional system – the Babcock Innovation Ventures and Commercialisation Summit – designed to connect our academic engine directly to the innovation economy. This system is deliberate, governed, and scalable, ensuring our research output reaches communities in need, our graduates become enterprise creators, and our intellectual property serves society rather than languishing in journals. It's about creating real impact and driving economic growth through innovation.

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The question is: does this institution have a structured pathway to translate its intellectual capital into ventures, products, and solutions that create economic and societal value? That question is the reason we are all gathered here this morning. And the answer is what we are formally activating today.