When Wawira Njiru founded Food4Education in 2012, her goal was simple: feed 25 children so that hunger would not stand between them and their education.
Fourteen years later, that small beginning has grown into one of Kenya’s most ambitious school-feeding initiatives, serving more than 660,000 meals every school day and creating more than 6,000 jobs across Kenya, most of them held by women.
Now, Njiru is taking that message to a global audience.
The Kenyan social innovator and Founder and CEO of Food4Education was honoured with the 2026 DVF Award in Venice, joining an extraordinary group of women that included actor and activist Jane Fonda, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario and author and advocate Gisèle Pelicot. Njiru was the only African honouree in this year’s class.
But for Njiru, the recognition was about more than an award. It was an opportunity to challenge the way the world sees Africa’s children.
“The world looks at African children and often sees need. Rarely as potential. I see something else.”
Speaking at the awards ceremony at Teatro Carlo Goldoni, Njiru called on the world to look beyond Africa’s challenges and recognise the enormous human potential sitting in classrooms across the continent.
She pointed to Africa’s rapidly growing young population as one of the defining opportunities of the century.
By 2050, one in four people globally is expected to be African, with hundreds of millions of children and young people coming of age across the continent.
For Njiru, this makes investment in children not simply a social responsibility, but an economic and developmental imperative.
“The world’s largest reserve of human capital is not a projection. It’s here. Right now. Sitting in African classrooms.”
What began as a project to ensure children did not learn on empty stomachs has evolved into a broader model for how school feeding can contribute to economic development.
Food4Education works with families, schools, farmers and governments to deliver meals to children while strengthening local economies.
The organisation has now served more than 200 million meals, while its school-feeding model continues to expand. It is currently on track to serve one million meals every school day by 2027.
The impact extends beyond the children receiving meals.
Food4Education has created thousands of jobs across Kenya, with women making up the majority of its workforce. Its model also creates demand for farmers, supports local markets and demonstrates how public investment in school meals can generate wider economic value.
Njiru believes that is the bigger picture.
School feeding, she argues, should not be viewed simply as putting food on a child’s plate. Done well, it can become part of the infrastructure that builds healthier children, stronger communities and a more productive economy.
Njiru’s work also represents a different narrative about African innovation.
Rather than importing solutions designed elsewhere, Food4Education has built a model rooted in Kenyan communities and designed around local realities.
The organisation uses its digital platform, Tap2Eat, alongside a distributed kitchen network and a large workforce to deliver meals at scale.
Its approach is now attracting interest beyond Kenya, with the blueprint being adapted as governments across Africa consider how to build sustainable school-feeding systems.
At the heart of Njiru’s message is a belief that Africa’s children should not be viewed primarily through the lens of poverty or need.
They are future scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, engineers, leaders and innovators.
And the question, she argues, is whether the world will invest in that potential early enough.
The DVF Awards, founded by Diane von Furstenberg and the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, recognise women whose leadership is creating meaningful change. Each honouree receives support to further the work of her organisation.
For Njiru, the recognition brings greater visibility to a message she has championed for more than a decade: that investing in children is one of the smartest investments a society can make.
Her journey—from a 21-year-old university student determined to feed children in her community to the leader of a social enterprise serving hundreds of thousands of meals each day—is a reminder that transformative change can begin with a deceptively simple idea.
Feed a child.
Keep that child in school.
Build the systems around them.
And believe in what that child can become.
For Wawira Njiru, Africa’s next generation is not waiting to be discovered.
They are already sitting in the classrooms.
And she is asking the world to invest in them.
About Wawira Njiru
Wawira Njiru is a Kenyan social innovator and the Founder and CEO of Food4Education, a not-for-profit social enterprise working to accelerate Africa’s school-feeding economy.
Since founding the organisation in 2012, Njiru has helped grow Food4Education from a project feeding 25 children into a large-scale initiative serving more than 660,000 meals every school day and employing more than 6,000 people across Kenya.
She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and TED Global speaker and has received several international recognitions for her work in social innovation, education and food security.
