NAIROBI
Kenyan nutritionist and social entrepreneur Wawira Njiru has been named the recipient of the 2026 German Africa Prize, awarded by the German Africa Foundation for her work transforming school feeding into a driver of local economic development.
Njiru is the founder and CEO of Food4Education, a social enterprise she started in 2012 while pursuing a nutrition degree. The organization began by feeding 25 schoolchildren and now provides meals to more than 660,000 children across more than 1,900 schools in Kenya, having delivered more than 200 million meals to date.
Reflecting on the organization’s growth, Njiru wrote on social media: “14 years and 250 million meals later, Food4Education is showing African solutions can be built at scale, by Africans, for Africans, with lessons for the world.”
Food4Education sources around 80% of its food from local smallholder farmers. The organization employs more than 6,000 people, the majority of them women and young people, working across kitchen management, food safety, logistics, supply chains and technology.
Claus Stäcker, president of the German Africa Prize jury and director of programs for Africa at Deutsche Welle, said Njiru’s work had shown that school feeding could extend beyond providing meals to children, according to a statement issued in late August.
“Wawira Njiru demonstrates that school feeding can be much more than simply providing meals. With Food4Education, she has created a system that reaches children, involves families and strengthens local economic cycles,” Stäcker said.
A shift in approach
Njiru said the recognition reflects a broader change in how African governments now view school feeding programs.
“For too long, school feeding was treated as charity. We have proven it is economic infrastructure,” she said.
She added that African governments are increasingly focused on the economic reach of such programs rather than only the number of children fed.
“They are asking how many jobs we can create, how many farmers we can connect to markets, and how much of their own budget is reinvested in local communities,” Njiru said.
The German Africa Prize will be presented to Njiru on Nov. 4 at the Allianz Forum in Berlin. Germany’s federal minister for economic cooperation and development, Reem Alabali-Radovan, will present the award.
Njiru was previously named United Nations Person of the Year in Kenya in 2021 for her work improving children’s access to nutritious school meals. Food4Education has set a target of feeding 1 million learners daily by 2027.
