Moroccan Ministry of Investment, Convergence and Evaluation of Public Policies (MICEPP) as well as with the Moroccan Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MIC) have signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreements with US-based Mawi DNA Technologies (Mawi), a medical device company focusing on the development of innovative technologies for biological sample collection, to explore a joint venture with Mawi’s local partner BIOTESSIA to establish a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Morocco to serve the African market.

The new facility would help fulfill Africa’s need for health sovereignty and accessibility, and Morocco was chosen as the site because it can also function as a launchpad to serve European markets.

Mawi has developed iSWAB-Microbiome-EL, a product that is being extensively deployed worldwide for population-scale surveillance testing for infectious diseases, notably Covid-19 and its variants, due to its unique properties of viral inactivation, non-toxic formation, and enabling labs to skip the RNA extraction step, reducing costs and increasing testing throughput. Mawi also has a broad portfolio of iSWAB sample collection technologies for mammalian DNA, RNA, intact cells, and microbiome (fecal, soil, surface, and skin), in addition to the HemaSure-OMICS whole blood collection technology allowing RNA, CTC, cfDNA, and genomic DNA to be isolated from a single sample. Mawi’s HemaSure blood collection technology is already being deployed in Kenya for HIV monitoring through a USAID funded programme.