Egyptian life sciences and biotech startup Nawah Scientific has received a US-FDA accreditation for food analysis, making it the first African entity to receive such accreditation.
Founded in 2015, Nawah Scientific is an online platform that receives experiment requests, collects samples, conducts tests and returns results digitally. Its aim is to enable scientists to conduct higher quality research, regardless of their location and owned lab facilities.
The startup has now obtained accreditation from the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for food analysis and safety, making it the first African centre to achieve such accreditation, and saving Egyptian and African companies the cost and time of sending samples for analysis outside the continent.
Dr Omar Sakr, founder and CEO of Nawah Scientific, said FDA accreditation was the most challenging, and previously limited to European companies.
“Now, Nawah Scientific is firmly positioned on the map of global laboratories and research centres, impacting the company and the Egyptian food market. This opens up collaboration opportunities with international organizations such as the UN World Food Programme, saving costs and time for Egyptian exporters seeking to export to the US market by analysing samples abroad before export,” he said.
Nawah Scientific now plans to leverage the new accreditation to expand into key African markets such as Nigeria and South Africa. The startup concluded a US$1 million pre-Series A round in 2021, and banked further funding from the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund last year.
