Africa does not lack intelligence, ambition or potential. What is missing are the connections between them.
One of the deeper challenges facing the continent is the distance between things that ought to be connected:
Novara exists to close these distances. We connect people with real problems, knowledge with application, research with innovation, innovation with enterprise, and talent with economic opportunity.
Everything else we do is an application of that single sentence. If an idea cannot be traced back to it, we do not launch it.
An Africa where people can develop their capabilities, knowledge moves between institutions and society, research connects to application, innovation can become enterprise, and institutions have the capacity to solve complex problems.
To bring people, knowledge, institutions and resources together around real problems and opportunities — and to develop the capability that lets Africans solve their own complex challenges.
A robotics organization builds the robot. A coding academy teaches programming. A university conducts research. An incubator supports a startup. A development organization funds a project.
Novara connects the pieces.
That is the hypothesis we are now working to prove.
We think in decades while executing in months and days.
Institutions become stronger when people become stronger.
Ambition does not replace research, measurement or intellectual honesty.
Complex problems require collaboration across disciplines and institutions.
Solutions should create measurable economic, social, scientific or institutional value.
The goal is not dependence on Novara. The goal is stronger people and institutions.
Every project should leave behind knowledge that improves the next one.
Our problems are rooted in Africa. Our standards and partnerships are global.
By 2035 Novara aims to have developed a strong African ecosystem connecting talent, education, research, innovation, enterprise, industry, institutions, capital and communities.
The long-term physical form of that ecosystem may include an innovation and research campus with laboratories, maker spaces and collaborative facilities. But infrastructure exists to let the institution serve more people and solve more important problems — not the other way around.
Our ultimate ambition is not to personally operate every solution to Africa's problems. It is to develop people and systems capable of creating solutions themselves.
The measure of success will be the capability created beyond Novara itself.
