Nawah Scientific, an Egyptian research and scientific services platform, has closed a $23 million Series A round to accelerate regional expansion and beef up its laboratory infrastructure.
The round was led by Life Ventures Holding and included deeptech and life sciences investors such as Den Venture, Empire M, AfricInvest, Elsewedy, together with angel investors and banking partners.
The financing was structured as a blended package combining equity with debt and grant funding.
Founder and CEO Dr. Omar Shokry Saqr said the capital will underwrite Nawah’s next growth phase, enabling the company to scale its research capacity and extend its commercial reach across MENA and Africa.
As part of that plan, Nawah intends to open a global research centre in Rwanda and to double the capacity of its existing laboratories in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Today the company operates about 20,000 square metres of lab space across its facilities.
Nawah Scientific has positioned itself as a one-stop provider for contract research, laboratory services and technology-enabled scientific workflows.
The new funding will be applied to expanding physical infrastructure, hiring specialised staff and investing in advanced equipment that can support both basic research and higher-value commercial testing and product development.
From a market perspective, the raise signals growing investor interest in regional life sciences capacity rather than merely exporting samples and projects overseas.
Building in-region capability can shorten timelines for drug discovery, diagnostics validation and agricultural biotech, and it can make it easier for startups, universities and multinational partners to run trials and scale products locally.
There are, however, practical hurdles ahead. Scaling lab networks requires not just capital but a steady pipeline of skilled technicians, regulatory alignment across jurisdictions, and robust quality assurance systems that meet international accreditation standards.
Nawah’s Rwanda plan is strategically smart because it taps into a region eager for science infrastructure, but converting new labs into high-utilisation centres will require commercial partnerships with pharma, agribusiness, research institutes and development agencies.
If Nawah Scientific can sustain high technical standards while building out local talent and forming strategic alliances, it could become a credible regional hub for contract research and testing.
That would reduce lead times and costs for African researchers and companies, and increase the region’s ability to participate in higher-value segments of the life sciences economy.
The blended funding approach used in this round also points to investor appetite for patient, structured capital in deeptech ventures that carry longer timelines but supply vital infrastructure.