Accra, 17.11.2019
After a fierce and intense competition, we are thrilled to announce that Nawah Scientific has won the second place at the first edition of Jack Ma’s Africa Netpreneur Prize, taking home $150,000 grant. Nawah Scientific was one of the ten finalists from Africa that got to pitch their startups in front of Alibaba’s founder and former executive chariman Jack Ma who was also part of the jury.
Africa Netpreneur Prize is Jack Ma’s flagship entrepreneur program in Africa led by the Jack Ma Foundation that was set up last year to award $10 million worth of grants to 100 entrepreneurs over next ten years.
Jack Ma attended the pitch and award ceremony in Ghana along with some other dignitaries including Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo and former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
Give Science A chance in Africa
Dr. Omar Sakr, Nawah’s founder and CEO, managed to impress the judges and audience, made it through a line of tough questions and delivered the right message: “Most of African problems can be boiled down to science, and by empowering African scientists, we unleash their potential in solving African problems”. He ended his pitch by stepping into the judges zone, looking them in the eye and saying “Give science a chance in Africa” and they said yes!
Nawah growth plans in Africa
Nawah is on a mission to build a network of highly advanced research centres across Africa, placed in strategic locations and well connected to empower the whole African scientific community. “The potential impact is unlimited” Dr. Sakr said, and added “We are not only giving African scientists the tools to solve Africa problems, but Nawah is only allowing for more biotech startups to emerge from Africa as we dampen the financial and technical barrier of availability of advanced equipped labs.”
Revolutionizing scientific research in Africa
Nawah is the Arabic word of ”nucleus”. Nawah is a core hub of advanced equipment specialized in natural and medical sciences and offering analytical and scientific services online and on demand. Nawah is an outsourcing partner to scientist and industries working in fields related to life sciences. Nawah’s online platform receives experiments requests, Nawah’s scientists carry them out and return results online. Thus, we enable scientists to carry cutting edge research, in less time and lower cost. Our clients are academics at universities in disciplines of life sciences (Biology, chem, pharma,…) as well as any industry in need of analyzing their products (Petro/oil, chemicals, agriculture, …). Founded in 2015, by Dr. Omar Sakr, who holds a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Geneva, Nawah has analyzed over 25K samples coming from 32 universities based in 9 countries. Nawah’s business model is revolutionizing the scientific research ecosystem since scientists can now carry world class level of research regardless of the equipment available in their labs.