As the world celebrated World Food Day this month, social entrepreneur and systems innovator Wawira Njiru, Founder and CEO of Food4Education, reached a new impact milestone: serving over 600,000 meals each school day at roughly $0.30 per child, and more than 150 million meals to date since she launched F4E over a decade ago.
Starting in 2012, when she served just 25 children in Ruiru, a small Kenyan town, Njiru today oversees one of Africa’s largest school feeding programs. At the heart of this system is the Giga Kitchen in Nairobi — Africa’s largest green kitchen — capable of preparing over 60,000 meals daily within a 20km radius using clean energy and water-saving steam technology. It is a model of scale and efficiency, linking local farmers, technology, and logistics into a seamless supply chain.
Food4Education’s blueprint now includes 30 centralized kitchens across Kenya, 17 co-owned with county governments, anchoring a model that is both locally rooted and nationally scalable. Building on this momentum, the organization is expanding into Zambia and exploring partnerships in Rwanda and Ethiopia, taking its proven approach beyond Kenya to demonstrate how African-led solutions can shape the future of school feeding across the continent.
This isn’t just a story of growth—it’s the story of a blueprint for Africa that has the potential to transform how Africa and potentially the world can feed their children.
Wawira’s work has received widespread global recognition. For the launch of Climate Week last month in New York City, Wawira was invited to ring the opening bell at Nasdaq’s joining other global innovators and investors at the Building the Future Summit, spotlighting Africa’s role in driving global systems change. Earlier this year, she delivered a powerful TED Talk on the main stage in Vancouver, earning a standing ovation as she reframed school meals as critical infrastructure for learning, equity, and prosperity.
She has also received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, was named among TIME100’s Most Influential Companies, and honored as both a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst and a CNBC Changemaker, among other accolades.
Beyond the accolades, Njiru is playing a direct role in shaping Kenya’s national school feeding policy through her contributions to the Council of Governors, helping embed sustainability and scalability into government programs.
This year’s World Food Day theme, “Hand in Hand for Better Foods and a Better Future”; mirrors Food4Education’s story. Its end-to-end system connects 5,000 smallholder farmers to reliable markets, creates over 4,400 jobs (most held by women and parents of the children served), and runs green energy kitchens powered by eco-briquettes and water-saving steam technology. Its Tap2Eat cashless wristband ensures every meal is traceable, providing the organization with a vast amount of data regarding the effectiveness of the program.
As Njiru often says: “Charity may feed for a day, but systems feed for generations. Africa can feed its future—child by child, classroom by classroom, nation by nation.”
By 2050, one in four members of the global workforce will be African. The systems built in Africa’s schools today will shape not just the continent’s trajectory, but the global future and Food4Education is proving that the smartest global investment is in Africa’s next generation.
As Njiru and her team set their sights on reaching 3 million children by 2030, one thing is clear: World Food Day 2025 is not just about food—it is about the future. And from Nairobi to New York, Wawira Njiru is showing the world what is possible when Africa leads.
