“No African student or researcher deserves a failed experiment because of cold chains or import delays. All African researchers and scientists deserve a chance to prove the science behind Africa.”
Ifahnui Joyce, founder and CEO of MoriPrax, FAS Biocamp Fellow 2026, Cameroon
Ifahnui Joyce grew up in Bamenda, in north-west Cameroon. One of her clearest childhood memories is not of a school or a laboratory, but of a corner of the family parlour, where she sat with her mother talking about disease. Those conversations stayed with her. She went on to study biotechnology and molecular biology at the University of Bamenda, earning both a Bachelor of Engineering and a Master of Engineering, and she expected a quiet, focused future: a researcher in a molecular biology lab.
That plan is still alive. What changed is that she now wants to build the thing every lab like that depends on.
MoriPrax makes ready-to-run molecular biology kits, covering DNA extraction, amplification and visualisation, for African students and researchers. The promise is simple: run a PCR in hours, not months, without waiting on imported reagents or a cold chain. To explain who it is for, Joyce points to one real person, a friend who is doing her research in molecular biology right now and cannot easily get the reagents she needs. Every delay in a shipment is a delay in her project. A kit that is already on the shelf would change the speed of her whole degree.
The first person outside Joyce’s close circle to say yes was a classmate. When Joyce visited campus and talked her through the idea, the classmate told her it could be a stepping stone that transforms the lives of researchers. It is a small yes, and Joyce is honest that it is an early one. No one has tried the product and walked away, and no one has said no, because the product is still being built.
Joyce first heard about FAS from her former internship supervisor, a woman who had trained her patiently and wanted her to get the best out of her academic life. The thing that almost stopped her from applying was time. She applied anyway. Her first FAS programme was the Market Research course in June 2025, where she learned how to calculate the size of a market, something she had never done before.
The Biocamp is where the fear broke. In the five-day bootcamp she met people who had built companies, made their mistakes and corrected them, and who told her what they had been through. Before it, she feared she would not make it. After it, she says, she found the courage to go ahead whatever the challenges. When she thinks about who is still in her life from FAS, she names Martin, one of the founders, who she calls a mentor and a director, someone whose encouragement pulled her through the moments when she might have given up.
On the day she joined FAS, MoriPrax was only an idea. Today it has a founder, a co-founder and an advisor, an official website, a company email address, and questionnaires in circulation with prospective users. The team is preparing to register the company, and MoriPrax has secured acceptance from the University of Bamenda's NAHPI to use their lab space for piloting. Joyce says plainly that without FAS the venture would have stayed an idea that eventually died, because she never saw a way forward.
She was wrong about something basic. She used to think that starting a company mostly meant having money. She now believes the opposite: a venture built without a deep understanding of the science, from the foundation up, is bound to collapse. You have to understand the science and the market before you operate anything.
Her co-founder is the person she has helped most since joining. She had never imagined being part of a venture, and she is grateful for the exposure it has given her.
Two problems are still open. The first is getting enough responses to the team’s questionnaires, in a world where people are busy and cautious about new things. The second is funding. What she still needs from FAS is a real connection to investors, and she trusts it will come once the team has grown enough to be ready for those meetings. For anyone who can help, she is open to talking about what they would want in return.
More on MoriPrax: moriprax.com
