Nigerian Scholar Wins $300k Prize in Italy for Proving Glass Bead Production is Indigenous to Africa

• Nigerian archaeologist Abidemi Babatunde Babalola has been selected as a 2025 Dan David Prize winner
• Legit.ng reports that the Dan David Prize, endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University, is the largest history prize in the world
• The Dan David Prize was first established in 2001 by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Dan David, to reward innovative and interdisciplinary work that contributed to humanity

Rome, Italy - Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, a research archeologist at The British Museum in the United Kingdom (UK), has won the 2025 Dan David Prize.

Legit.ng reports that the Dan David Prize ($300,000 cash) is the world's largest financial reward for excellence in the historical discipline.

Saheed Aderinto, a professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies in the Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University, United States—who won the Dan David Prize in 2023—shared the update via his known Facebook page on Tuesday, June 10, 2025.

Aderinto expressed his delight at witnessing "another truly exceptional scholar from Nigeria" achieve excellence at the awards ceremony in Italy on Wednesday, May 28.

He explained that to claim the 2025 Dan David Prize, his compatriot proved that glass bead production is indigenous to Africa.

Aderinto's post can be read below:

The Dan David Prize is not a grant, it’s a prize. It's a reward for achieving undeniable success through field-defining research. The prize money helps the winners to continue to break new boundaries. Dr. Babalola will receive $300,000 in his bank account. If you see him, bill him—he has real money!

So, what exactly did Dr. Babalola do to win the Dan David Prize? A simple explanation is that he proved that glass bead production is indigenous to Africa. This is a novel and nobel discovery because for decades, scholars argued that Africa didn't have the capacity to produce glass beads. Because material culture is a gateway to the history of human civilization, his discovery has a major implication for Africa's ancient history.

For two decades, Dr. Babalola did numerous archeological excavations at Ile-Ife, worked in world-class laboratories, and held prestigious fellowships at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. His hard labour and exciting discoveries further positions Ile-Ife in Yoruba history and opens new vistas for understanding ancient African civilisation.

Combining hardcore scientific tools with ethnographic, archeological, and historical methodologies, Dr. Babalola explicates the cardinal place of glass beads in Ile-Ife and Yoruba culture, placing the history of a material object at the center of a wide-range of experiences that transcend class, gender, power, religion, and authority.

Dr. Babalola is more than a genius and a fellow scholar—he's also one of my best friends. We became friends in 1998 as undergraduates at the University of Ibadan. We both moved to the US and raised families in Texas, while completing our PhDs. He was at Rice University in Houston, while I was at the University of Texas at Austin.

That’s not all. We share the same perspectives on rigor, audacity, and tenacity. We were both denied critical support at the most important periods of our careers by people who mattered most, then. But what was supposed to kill us made us strongest. We scaled professional hurdles with dignity. And against all odds, we excelled, pulling through unfathomable work ethic that produced unbelievable outcomes, which marveled even the king of the doubting Thomases.

During the awards ceremony on May 28 in Italy, we reproduced our 1999 photo, taken on the campus of the University of Ibadan. It's 26 years apart, but it feels like this morning!

Congrats Baatunde.

Read more on Nigerians' exploits abroad:

• Brilliant Nigerian scholar wins multi-million naira award from Washington
• LASU graduate wins prestigious scholarship in US, set to complete Masters in Strategic Communication

Two Nigerians win $500,000 tech prize

Earlier, Legit.ng reported that Samuel Adekunle and Johnson Jayeola, two brilliant Nigerians, were announced winners of the tech-worth $500,000 See Through Carbon competition, alongside UK-based Italian tech entrepreneur Laura Degiovanni.

The See-Through Carbon Competition is a unique pilot project to bring cutting-edge technology to promote carbon drawdown in the Global South.

The winners are to work with people through the projects to bring lasting positive change to the environment and improve living conditions.

Source: Legit.ng