Kenyan entrepreneur receives award for providing school meals to hundreds of thousands

Wawira Njiru received the German Africa Prize 2026 in Berlin for her work with Food4Education, an organization that provides daily school meals to hundreds of thousands of children in Kenya.

Njiru founded the organization in 2012 after observing that many students in Kenya struggled to concentrate in class due to hunger. She initially faced rejection from the Kenyan Ministry of Education when she proposed a meal program.

She returned years later with a model that now serves 600,000 meals daily across 1,500 schools. The organization operates a network of decentralized kitchens, including a large facility in Nairobi that produces 60,000 meals every day using eco-friendly technology. The organization maintains a financially sustainable model by purchasing local produce from small-scale farmers. Njiru uses a custom payment app to track demand and reduce food waste, allowing the organization to produce each meal for 0.30 dollars.

Through state support and various partnerships, parents pay only 0.15 dollars per meal. The initiative employs 6,000 people, primarily parents of the students, providing them with a steady income. Food4Education reports that the distribution of nutritious meals, including rice, vegetables, and plant-based proteins, led to a 20 percent improvement in national exam results and higher school attendance rates. Njiru plans to expand the program to serve more than one million students in Kenya next year.

She also intends to export this business model to other African countries with support from the African Development Bank and donors in the USA.