Wawira Njiru

Company: Food4EducationTitle: Founder & CEOIndustry: Food/restaurantNotable in 2024: Njiru tripled the reach of her non-profit, which now feeds nearly half a million schoolchildren in Africa, and launched a plan to expand to three million by 2030.

In Africa alone, 1 in 3 children experience severe food insecurity, and this largely affects students' retention rates in schools. Wawira Njiru saw that firsthand growing up in Ruiru, a small community in Kenya where many of her classmates were going hungry. She shared her food with them, and the experience made her conscious of food insecurity at an early age.

Motivated by this, Njiru founded the first iteration of Food4Education in 2012 to feed 25 hungry children from a small, one-room building in a town outside of Nairobi. Today, the non-profit organization serves 500,000 daily lunches – with a plan to scale to three million by 2030.

Njiru began fundraising while earning her undergraduate degree in nutrition science at the University of South Australia. There, she hosted a Kenyan-themed fundraising dinner, charging per plate to fund her dream. With the money raised, Food4Education was born.

In the 13 years since, it has built a scalable, sustainable network of kitchens and distributors to deliver roughly half a million hot, affordable, nutritious lunches to children across 10 counties in Kenya every single day.

Many programs have existed to combat this issue, but they're often run by "outsiders" – non-locals who fail to utilize local ingredients and resources. Seeing this need and the common pitfalls of other, less successful solutions, Njiru made it her mission to take on hunger from a more holistic perspective, with everything from sustainability practices to innovative payment tech.

The organization's work has resulted in an 8-10% increase in attendance at participating schools, a 20% increase in performance on national exams and the creation of over 4,000 jobs.

Food4Education has had a record year, tripling its reach compared to 2023 – propelled by the launch of Africa's largest "green kitchen." The 32,000-square-foot, climate-smart "giga kitchen" uses solar energy, eco-briquettes and steam to produce 60,000 meals a day with close to zero waste.

It also recently established a partnership with the local government in Nairobi to feed 250,000 schoolchildren. The program has provided the infrastructure to deliver 30 million meals to date, and Kenya President William Ruto commended the program for its impact on student enrollment – which is now up 34%.

As CEO and founder, Njiru won the 2024 Skoll Award and was a 2024 Audacious Project grantee for her work feeding the hungry. But it's not just about hunger – she sees food as "the great equalizer." Njiru knows that, by feeding the children of Kenya nutritious, reliable meals, her company has increased their potential for greatness, uplifted local communities and set in motion a plan to grow the African economy.