During the GITEX Africa exhibition that took place in Marrakech during late May and early June, Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI) showcased some of its young entrepreneurs and startups as they shared their innovative ideas in various fields.
“We are bringing three things that are unique to Al Akhawayn University,” AUI’s Chief Officer of Employability & Entrepreneurship Deborah Bartlett told Morocco World News (MWN) at the event.
Bartlett detailed that the university has engineering programs that use “disruptive technologies” and Artificial Intelligence (AI), a student-led incubator that provides peer-to-peer mentoring to student entrepreneurs, and startups with “disruptive technologies,” drawing attention to Annarabic and Borsa, two of the featured startups.
“At Al Akhawayn University, we connect Gen Z to the industry with the disruptive innovative technologies needed for the future,” she added.
AUI is “proud to link the industry and academia all together reflecting on our programs in science and engineering and indeed inspiring other universities to lead,” Salah Al-Majeed, the Dean of the School of Science & Engineering (SSE) at AUI explained to MWN.
Young entrepreneur at AUI
The university is working closely with different types of innovation and on projects related to healthcare and agriculture to produce an entrepreneurship mindset of the Gen Z students who will be leading the country in various sectors.
The ideas presented by the AUI students interested many investors, including Nicolas Klotz, the executive business developer of Devoteam, who expressed “amazement” by the idea of Annarabic that tackles the Moroccan Arabic (Darija) dialect, and also the microfinance project Borsa.
“Working with them [AUI students] is also a great opportunity for me to find new ideas in my job and to design new ways to make digital transformation,” Klotz said.
Nour Berrada, a fresh graduate from the School of Science and Engineering at AUI, created her fintech project Borsa as her end of study capstone project at AUI. She later got the opportunity to present her project in EuraTechnologies in Lille, France, the largest incubator of startups in the European continent.
Al Akhawayn University
“As a Moroccan entrepreneur, it has just been great to have this ecosystem of help around me, and take this project that was designed for Morocco into a more international scope,” Berrada told MWN.
Annarabic is “a startup that aims to empower every Arab voice through creating speech recognition systems for the different Arabic dialects,” said co-founder Ahmed Jaafari, who recently graduated from AUI.
They now support both the Moroccan and Egyptian dialects, and they hope to add more dialects throughout the year.
“Annarabic is a startup that focuses on well-being and how to understand people and Moroccans specifically.” Jaafari said.
“At GITEX, you can see, Moroccans have a great skill set. We need to capitalize on that in order to make our country move forward and in order to make Africa better because we have potential and we love our country and we are doing it for our country,” he said.
Ali Jaafari, Ahmed’s brother who is also studying at AUI and is the co-founder of Annarabic, said they met more than 50 clients and investors in GITEX.
The investors were really impressed by the technology and are willing to go to the next step with them in order to further develop their project, he added.
GITEX Africa presented a great opportunity for Moroccan entrepreneurs with far leading capabilities to connect with investors and founders of African startups in technology and innovation.
The goal is to create a network of entrepreneurs throughout the continent, empowering the younger generation to create change in various aspects of the economy. Through its student-led programs and clubs, AUI is working hard in order to achieve this goal.
