A deep tech hub and venture studio that rebuilds the CIC Cambridge stack for Kano: a venture engine, a physical density engine, an evidence engine, and a community engine.
Kano is one of the largest and fastest growing cities in Africa, and a commercial hub for more than five centuries.
Zero Bola builds Innovation Driven Enterprises (IDEs) across the full nexus of food, environment, health, and wellbeing. The anchor thesis is converting Kano’s waste streams into the raw material of a new circular economy. Over twenty years, the aim is the first innovation ecosystem of its kind in the Global South, a place the world travels to in order to learn.
The city supplies what the model needs: abundant agricultural and livestock feedstock, a rich medicinal plant tradition, waste that is nearly free as raw material, environmental damage that is visible and measurable, and a very large market for food, fertilizer, energy, and health.
Zero Bola Catalyst
The Catalyst systematically builds IDEs that close loops in the regional economy.
Each venture starts from an Atlas feedstock or crop map plus a potential off-taker on record, and secures at least one anchor corporate or municipal off-taker before build stage capital is committed. Studio generated IP is assigned to Zero Bola LLC and licensed to ventures, creating a royalty stream that funds the Foundation over time.
The Atlas identifies a quantified feedstock or crop opportunity and an unmet market need. The studio also scouts university research for results with commercial potential.
An 8 to 12 week sprint: laboratory access, customer discovery, a prototype in the fabrication workshop, and unit economics.
An embedded team of venture builder, scientist, and engineer works with the founders. Pre-seed capital is committed and IP is filed to Zero Bola LLC.
Incorporation, first contracts, and follow-on fundraising.
Studio support tapers. Studio equity and LLC royalties recycle returns into the next cohort.
Founded by Dr. Anas Balarabe Yazid to commercialize his Imperial College doctoral research, Symbiocle turns tannery wastewater and burnt crop straw into clean bioenergy and fertilizer. It is the proof of concept for the Catalyst model.
Learn more about Symbiocle
A digital platform that helps sub-national governments run, pay for, and verify waste services. It becomes the single source of truth against which contracts are paid, credits are issued, and citizens judge performance.
Learn more about Zero Bola OSTwo operating platforms give the Studio what most hubs cannot rent: real feedstock, real data, and real places to prove things at scale.
Zero Bola holds no equity in either. What it holds is research access, data rights into the Atlas, training placements for fellows and researchers, and the intellectual property of ventures built from what they produce, which is assigned to Zero Bola LLC. Illustrative examples of that pipeline: a sesame seed selection venture sourced from estate trial data, or a hibiscus biopesticide validated across estate plots.
Jigawa, 300 hectares approved
A climate smart farm estate approved by the Jigawa State Government and led by our Co-Founder, Dr. Adnan Aminu Adnan, through ADAB Agri-Resources. It gives the Studio hectare scale trials, agro-processing waste streams, and a training site between the greenhouse and the market.
Zero Bola holds no equity in Shabaru. More about Shabaru
Non-binding MoU, July 2026
Certis, founded and led by our Founder, Dr. Anas Balarabe Yazid, signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with the Kano State Ministry of Water Resources, Environment and Climate Change covering modernization of the state waste system, operational management of its effluent treatment plants, a drainage master plan, and climate finance.
Zero Bola holds no equity in Certis. Any engagement follows the Ministry’s own procurement processes.
Assays, soil and water chemistry, extraction protocols, and quality control on campus.
Square metre trials: compost and biofertilizer validation, and drought tolerance screening.
Hectare scale trials at Shabaru, and city scale waste streams in Kano.
First contracts with processors, aggregators, and municipal buyers across Kano and Jigawa.
Standards, certification, and export channels for seed, inputs, and botanical products.
Most hubs stop at the greenhouse. The distance between a trial result and a farm or a city at scale is where deep tech ventures usually die.
Zero Bola Campus
Deep tech cannot be built in a coffee shop. The campus provides the infrastructure that makes science based ventures possible in Kano.
A leased site is under renovation. Alongside it, Zero Bola is pursuing a hosting partnership with a University in Kano that would place the campus inside the region’s research ecosystem and feed the Research-to-Venture pipeline directly.
The campus proves things at square metre scale. The ground platforms prove them at hectare scale in Jigawa and at city scale in Kano.
The campus is a working demonstration of zero waste, with on-site composting of kitchen waste, biogas or solar integration, recycled construction materials, and water recycling. Visitors should see the thesis, not only hear it.
| Asset | Strategic role | Revenue and value lever |
|---|---|---|
| Wet chemistry laboratory | Soil, water, and waste characterization; venture R&D; botanical extraction assays and quality control; export quality testing | Paid laboratory services (Ltd); research partnerships (Foundation) |
| Dry 3D manufacturing workshop | Prototyping, plastics to product ventures, spare parts fabrication | Fabrication services and membership tiers (Ltd) |
| Co-working spaces | Density and collision | Memberships (Ltd) |
| Botanical garden | Living laboratory: medicinal plants, phytoremediation demonstrations, germplasm for crop research, education | Tourism and education programs; venture R&D feedstock |
| Greenhouse | Controlled agriculture pilots: compost and biofertilizer validation, drought tolerance screening | Pilot hosting fees; venture testbed |
| Lounge and kitchen | Collision infrastructure, where informal trust is built | Cafe revenue; event catering |
| 24/7 power and internet | Reliability that is rare in the region | Premium pricing; the reason corporates and researchers choose the campus |
Zero Bola Atlas
The Atlas builds and owns the definitive dataset on Kano’s waste streams, soils, waters, crops, climate, and medicinal plants.
It is the intelligence layer the other pillars run on. Every Atlas insight feeds the Studio at the Source stage, so data is the studio’s deal flow.
Whoever owns the region’s environmental and agricultural data owns the agenda for funders, for policy, for venture theses, and eventually for certification and standards.
Zero Bola Exchange
Adapted from Venture Cafe Cambridge, the Exchange creates the weekly rhythm that turns a building into an ecosystem.
Layer 1
The people who turn Atlas data and research into ventures.
Layer 2
Universities and secondary schools that supply ideas, talent, and evidence.
Layer 3
Aggregators and pickers’ associations, engaged as partners rather than charity.
Layer 4
The buyers, processors, and agencies that turn pilots into contracts.
Layer 5
Nigerians abroad and global partners who bring capital, skills, and reach.
Three entities run three engines that feed one flywheel. The target is to move from about 90 percent grant funding in Year 1, to an even split by Year 5, to core operations covered by earned and investment income by Year 10.
Impact and program revenue
Earned revenue, the sustainability engine
Capital and IP
Launch the brand before the building, then grow the density that makes Kano worth visiting.
Phase 0, current phase
During renovation: Ask the Expert, the Dispatch newsletter, the Founding 100, university ambassadors, and paid pilot consulting.
Phase 1, years 0 to 3
Targets: campus operational, 100 or more founders through studio programs, 10 to 15 ventures launched, and Atlas version 1 published.
Phase 2, years 3 to 10
Target by Year 7: a portfolio of 20 to 40 IDEs with 5 or more at commercial scale, and the Atlas as the region’s reference dataset.
Phase 3, years 10 to 20
The model replicated in at least three other Global South cities, licensed through Zero Bola LLC.
A destination ecosystem that has not first transformed its own city is a facade. The board reviews both scoreboards together every year.
Global
The number of global leaders and delegations who visit Kano each year to learn from and replicate the model. The trajectory runs from zero today to 2 a year by Year 3, 10 or more by Year 7, and 50 or more a year by Year 15.
Local
Founders, researchers, and operators: tell us what you are building.
Corporates, funders, and institutions: let’s scope it together.