Al-Sumait Prizes for Health and Food Security Advances in Africa, Finalists Selected

Kuwait City, September 21, 2016 – The upcoming laureates for Kuwait’s Al-Sumait Prize for Health and Al-Sumait Prize for Food Security in Africa have been recommended at the Selection panels meeting in Kuwait City this week. The winning nominees were selected by the committees responsible for each prize who meticulously considered both the recommendations of the respective evaluation committees as well as the actual applications of the prospective nominees.

The proposed winning entrants will now be put forward to the Board of Trustees of Al-Sumait Prize, which will meet in Kuwait City on Monday, October 17, 2016, to confirm the choice and formally announce the prize winners. The laureates will receive their awards during a ceremony at The Grand Reception of the Fourth Arab African Summit in Equatorial Guinea on November 22, 2016.

Dr. Adnan Shihab-Eldin, Director General of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), which administers the awards, said: “The chosen laureates for Al-Sumait’s Health and Food Security prizes have been carefully vetted and reviewed through a rigorous process designed to ensure that they meet the ambition to promote real and significant progress in the fields of Health and Food security throughout the African continent.”

Dr. Shihab-Eldin noted that Al-Sumait prize is one of the leading humanitarian efforts initiated by the Amir of the State of Kuwait, H.H. Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of KFAS. The prize celebrates the life of the late Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Sumait, a Kuwaiti physician who devoted his life towards helping the poor in Africa.

The acting Director of the Prize Office at the Foundation, Dr. Mustafa Marafi, said the Al-Sumait Prize’s – each worth one million dollars – are available to both individuals and institutions from around the world who have conducted outstanding research or made significant progress to enhance health and food security in Africa. He said ,the prizes also encompassed rewarding research in upgrading infrastructure and human capacity development for combating poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy.

Noting that the laureates shortlisted for the two Al-Sumait prizes were selected by separate evaluation panels each composed of three eminent international experts in the respective health and food security fields, Dr. Marafi added: “The nominees shortlisted for the Al-Sumait prizes reflects an unprecedented level of effort and commitment to promote health and food security in Africa and enhance initiatives to help Africa achieve its full potential.

In 2017 a new prize category – Al-Sumait Prize for Education – will be launched to help promote and recognize modern education systems in both basic and applied educations as well as universities. The education prize will also encompass projects on the proliferation of schools, universities, institutions and laboratories to provide a faculty of teachers and educationally qualified trainers in applied and social fields and crafts.

For more information, please visit www.alsumaitprize.org or please contact the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) at:

P. (+965) 22270465

E. info@alsumaitprize.org