A Nigerian nursing student's waste-to-energy invention just won top honours in London

Covenant Ibukun Awoyemi is a final-year nursing student at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ogun State, Nigeria — and now an award-winning inventor. Her 'Green and Renewable Energy Biodigester', an appliance that turns livestock waste into biogas for cooking and household energy, won Best Research Innovation of the Year at the NextGen Innovation Challenge 2026 grand finale at ExCeL London. Awoyemi rose through a national programme of more than 2,900 young innovators to become one of 70 finalists in London, in a competition run by Nigeria's National Board for Technology Incubation to find practical home-grown solutions to real-world problems.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: tech innovation