Food4Education CEO Wawira Njiru to Receive German Africa Prize

Wawira Njiru will accept the 2026 German Africa Prize on Wednesday evening in recognition of her work feeding schoolchildren in Kenya. The award, given by the German Africa Foundation, honors her for building Food4Education into a major social enterprise. German Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan will present the prize to Njiru.

Njiru began her career at age 21 with a goal to feed 100 children daily. She studied nutrition science in Adelaide, Australia, where she realized the impact of proper meals on learning. Her first fundraiser served only 25 students. Since then, she has expanded the organization to employ 6,000 staff and serve more than 600,000 students in 19,000 schools across the country.

The organization operates on a mixed funding model. Donations and government grants cover most costs. Parents contribute a small fee, sometimes as low as 5 Kenyan shillings, which equals about 3 US cents. Payments are managed through a digital system called Tap-to-Eat. Each child wears a wristband that tracks meal attendance and parent payments. This data helps staff identify when a student misses a meal and why.

Food4Education sources about 80 percent of its food from small-scale local farmers. This approach provides students with fresh meals while giving farmers a consistent market. Njiru argues that school meals function as economic infrastructure rather than charity. Her workforce is more than 70 percent women, a composition she attributes to early challenges in hiring men who were hesitant to work for a young female founder.

School officials report that the program improves student attendance and academic performance. Raphaera Kanya, a primary school director in Nairobi, stated that children cannot understand lessons when they are hungry. Jane Nyambura, a student, said the meals reduce the social divide between students who have food at home and those who do not. Njiru has set a target to serve 1 million children daily in the future.

The German Africa Prize has been awarded since 1993. It recognizes individuals from African countries whose work offers solutions to global issues. Recent recipients have come from Zimbabwe, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone. Njiru described her journey from feeding 25 children to her current scale as a process of overcoming challenges. She said she feels confident in her organization’s ability to meet future goals.