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Stakeholders convened at the Gender and Inclusion Summit in Abuja on Tuesday to discuss how innovation can support vulnerable groups, especially as limited access to electricity, internet, and other infrastructure threatens to marginalise some communities.
The two-day summit, themed “Making Innovations Count for the Last Mile,” brings together experts, policymakers and other stakeholders to deliberate on how innovation can deliver greater social impact for underserved communities.
Adekemi Omole, Associate Director, Programmes at the Policy Innovation Centre, told News Central that the theme reflects concerns that the rapid expansion of innovation could further widen inequality.
She noted that many innovations depend on infrastructure that is not equally accessible to everyone.
“The theme, Making Innovations Count for the Last Mile, was really chosen because innovation is expanding,” Omole said.
“However, we’ve seen that the tendency for innovation continues to drive inequality, particularly because a lot of innovations are dependent on existing infrastructure like electricity, connectivity and everything around those infrastructure.”
She questioned whether people living in communities without reliable access to such infrastructure could fully benefit from technological and social innovations.
Omole said innovation remains important in improving people’s lives, describing it as the ability to solve problems more effectively.
She said the organisation is focused on ensuring that innovation reaches underserved communities and that the benefits of social impact are not limited to people with access to better infrastructure and resources.
“We just really want to ensure that innovation reaches the last mile so that the impacts of social impact can get to everyone,” Omole said.
The summit is expected to continue on Wednesday with discussions on gender-based violence, early childhood development and other issues linked to inclusion and reaching underserved populations.
Omole said participants would also take part in exhibitions, panel discussions, roundtables, plenary sessions and breakout meetings, alongside networking opportunities.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to power on even higher,” she said.
“We’re going to have sessions around gender-based violence, early child development and just different components of conversations that would ensure that we’re able to reach the last mile.”
According to her, one of the summit’s key objectives is to bring together people with different experiences and expertise to exchange ideas and develop practical responses to social challenges.
“What we do with the summit is cross-pollinate ideas, bringing experts who have this experience, who have been doing the work,” she said.
“We learn from each other, we identify the problem, we design the solution.”
Omole said the conversations at the summit were intended to extend beyond the event itself, with lessons and proposed solutions feeding into ongoing policy and social impact initiatives.
She noted that work began after discussions at the 2025 edition of the summit on developing a gender legislative agenda for Africa.
According to Omole, participants at last year’s summit identified the lack of a consolidated framework for promoting inclusive legislation, particularly on women’s representation and participation.
“The first time this conversation was held was in the 2025 summit,” she said.
“We realised that there was no consolidated framework to drive inclusive legislature, particularly as it concerns women.”
She said the Policy Innovation Centre and its partners had since spent about nine months conducting research to identify barriers and opportunities for greater inclusion.
“For the past nine months thereabouts, we’ve been doing some research, some groundwork to try and understand barriers and opportunities for entry so that we can design this framework,” Omole said.
The proposed framework, she added, is expected to provide clearer pathways for ensuring that different groups, particularly women and young people, have stronger representation and participation in legislative processes.
“We know how significant this is,” she said, stressing the need to ensure that the voices of women, young people and other groups are heard in legislatures.
The summit continues in Abuja on Wednesday.
.@OsasuyiDirisu says the Gender and Inclusion Summit has spent the past five years turning policy and governance discussions into recommendations and initiatives designed to deliver measurable change. pic.twitter.com/wqnD8u28Vn
— News Central TV (@NewsCentralTV) September 8, 2026
