The MENA Region Recognition Award spotlights emerging youth visionaries across the Middle East and North Africa who are combining technological sophistication with deep community awareness. Featuring individual and team initiatives, this year's regional cohort represents innovative youth leaders across Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Palestine, driving local solutions that address interconnected environmental, health, and economic challenges.   

These regional projects directly align with SOIF’s Foresight Transformation Missions and advance key UN Sustainable Development Goals, with a strong focus on SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health & Well-being), SDG 7 (Affordable & Clean Energy), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities & Communities), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action).   

Key themes include:

Offline Healthcare & Diagnostic Equity: Projects expand accessible care through low-cost, resilient technologies, such as Health-Tech Equity (Egypt) engineering zero-waste offline health monitors for affordable eldercare, alongside EndoEase (UAE) and Bloomly (UAE) providing wearable healthcare ecosystems and digital platforms to break health stigmas.

Urban Microclimate & Climate Resilience: Youth harness data to safeguard local communities, led by The Urban Body (UAE) utilizing citizen sensors, GIS, and satellite data to map microclimates for actionable urban health interventions.

Closed-Loop Agriculture & Resource Security: Solutions address regional water-energy-food challenges, including Nabd (Egypt) integrating smart soil sensors, solar power, and direct marketplaces, and Tidal Bites (UAE) providing climate-resordable marine-based nutrition to tackle hidden hunger.

AI & Computational Biology: Young innovators leverage advanced algorithms to minimize environmental impact, highlighted by ColiFormer (Egypt) using Transformer-based AI models to optimize gene expression and reduce biological manufacturing waste.

Youth Agency & Systems Engagement: Platforms build regional capability and grassroots action, from Future Piñata (Palestine) repurposing traditional cultural games into interactive tools for collective youth foresight, to Future Advisors Forum (Egypt) and Stemmaterials (Egypt) empowering students through cross-disciplinary sustainability networks and centralized academic resources.

FIRST PLACE WINNER

First Place Winner (UAE): The Urban Body

The Urban Body uses citizen sensors, GIS, and satellite data to produce youth-generated urban health reports for UAE communities, transforming microclimate data into actionable interventions.

Runner-ups

Runner Up (Egypt): Health-Tech Equity: Anticipating Egypt's healthcare crisis, our student team engineered a zero-waste offline health monitor using reusable cartridges—slashing testing costs by 98% and expanding accessible elder care.

Runner Up (Palestine): Future Piñata repurposes a traditional children's game into an interactive tool, helping youth challenge assumptions, explore uncertainty, and turn shared imagination into purposeful community action.

Runner Up (UAE): Tidal Bites: Addressing SDG 2, this dual initiative provides climate-friendly, highly nutritious snacks while offering affordable dietary supplements that enhance everyday meals to effectively eliminate hidden hunger.