This work reports, for the first time, oligosaccharides as elicitors enhancing production of bacitracin A in liquid cultures of Bacillus licheniformis. A 3 3 fractional factorial design was used to investigate optimal elicitation conditions. Mannan oligosaccharide moiety (MO), oligomannuronate (OM) and oligoguluronate (OG) were used as elicitors with concentrations of 100, 200 and 300mg/L and addition times of 0, 12 and 24h. There was enhancement of bacitracin A production with no significant change in biomass levels using the oligosaccharides as elicitors. Supplementation of B. licheniformis liquid cultures with mannan oligosaccharide moiety and oligomannuronate resulted in similar bacitracin A titres of up to 782mg/L after 52h. Response surface methodology, showed statistically significant effect on the cultures by the elicitor type (P<0.0001) and concentration (P<0.005). The final optimal condition for highest bacitracin A production was 100mg/L of OG added to 24h old cultures.Overall, OG was found to be the most effective elicitor with bacitracin A yield significantly different compared to the control (P<0.5). Yield improvements of 29%, 27% and 16% over the control were achieved with OG, MO and OM, respectively.