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Babs Omotowa, president, Nigerian University of Technology and Management (NUTM), has shared his vision for building a world-class university in Africa that empowers the continent’s next generation of innovators and leaders.
Omotowa made this known while speaking at Lehigh University’s Iacocca Global Leaders Speaker Series, when he shared a bold vision for the future of higher education in Africa, one grounded in innovation and leadership, aimed at equipping graduates with globally competitive skills to reverse the continent’s migration of talent and spur economic transformation.
“Our goal is to build a top 50 worldwide university in Africa,” Omotowa said. “That’s quite a huge ambition, but that’s the quality of what we’re seeking to build,” he added.
The Nigerian higher education leader who spoke on the topic ‘Oasis in Africa, For Africa and the World’ said, “Not many people have the good fortune to be part of building a new university, so I can count myself fortunate.”
“It’s important to remember: every time you think of a problem, it’s actually an opportunity.”
A fast-growing population
Omotowa described how NUTM’s academic model reimagines higher education in Africa through its Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Design (TED) framework, an interdisciplinary approach that blends STEM learning with management, design thinking, and hands-on projects in partnership with African companies.
Omotowa said NUTM maintains close partnerships with major companies through industry councils that review its curriculum, ensuring students gain not only technical knowledge but also the professional and ethical skills employers demand.
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Africa’s population is expected to grow faster than any other region in the world in the coming decades. By 2050, the continent will be home to roughly 850 million young people, or about 40 percent of the global youth population.
However, he said, no African university currently ranks among the world’s top 250 higher education institutions.
“What we were seeing is, increasingly, the quality of those universities in Africa have been sub-par.
“Young people who want access to a quality education have had to leave the country for the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world, and most of them don’t return,” he said.
The renowned academic attributed the challenge of education tourism to several factors, including outdated curricula, limited industry linkage, inadequate infrastructure, and uneven faculty quality.
“NUTM’s vision is to cultivate a new generation of African innovators and leaders capable of driving sustainable growth and global competitiveness,” he said.
Remarkable early results
Omotowa disclosed that NUTM has already begun to see remarkable results.
“Of its 165 graduates, 97 percent were either employed within three months of completing the program or had launched their own ventures.
“Among those working in the corporate sector, average salaries increased 600 percent compared to their previous earnings,” he noted.
In addition, he said, “45 percent of graduates continued the entrepreneurial ventures they started at NUTM, spanning industries such as health care, agriculture, fintech, and insurance.
“These ventures have created more than 700 jobs and raised over $3 million in funding.”
He explained that the university’s model, which emphasises employability, entrepreneurship, and real-world impact, has drawn global attention and parallels the success of India’s Ashoka University, a partner institution through Lehigh’s Global Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives (GPSI) office.
Looking ahead, Omotowa said that NUTM plans to expand from its pilot phase to a 10,000-student residential campus and a digital platform serving up to half a million learners across Africa by 2030.
The Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership prepares current and future leaders to take on complex, multi-system, global challenges through applied research, dialogues with subject-matter experts, and experiential learning programs.
Grounded in the praxis of systems thinking and idealised design, the Iacocca Institute embraces an interactive approach to problem solving and the conviction that we are better together.
The Institute and GPSI are part of OIA, which seeks to position Lehigh as a premier destination for the world’s best students, ensure all students have access to international education experiences, and prepare Lehigh community members to be global learners, citizens, and leaders.
