A Kenyan-Based Organization Has Been Nominated To The Fourth Annual TIME100 Most Influential Companies

By Raymond Wajohi

A Kenyan-based organization has been nominated to the fourth annual TIME100 Most Influential Companies list for its commitment in mainstreaming scalable and high-quality school feeding across Africa.

Food 4 Education (F4E), a non-profitable organization, has been earmarked for the award for its vital role in ensuring children in Africa have access to a hot, affordable, and nutritious school meal every day.

TIME100 recognizes companies which have made an extraordinary impact around the world where millions of children have over the years been suffering from hunger that affects their health and social-emotional development.

Most countries in Africa have embraced locally-led and independently run school-feeding programs and F4E has been participating to close this hunger gap. It has been implementing a blueprint for scalable, replicable, and cost-efficient school feeding programs.

Speaking to the media yesterday, the organization’s Chief Executive Officer Wawira Njiru said they have utilized the opportunity to build more resilient, just, and sustainable food feeding programs in learning institutions across the continent.

“Today serves as proof of the transformative power of food in changing lives. As an African non-profit organization, we take immense pride in being recognized in the TIME100 list, alongside numerous innovative and impactful companies worldwide,” Wawira said.

The organization started in 2012 where it fed 25 children from a makeshift kitchen. Henceforth, it has fledged into large-scale operation that currently provides meals to 300,000 children daily.

Working across multiple value chains, F4E sits at the heart of a locally-powered network that includes thousands of smallholder farmers whose leadership is composed of 75 percent women.

The organization has a trusted pool of aggregators, two warehouses, 20 centralized and 55 semi-centralized rural kitchens that boast an outreach of more than 1,000 schools.

F4E’s board chairperson Kristin Groos Richmond said: “Having co-founded and worked as the CEO of Revolution Foods delivering healthy school meals in the United States, I understand the profound impact that access to nutritious food can have on a child’s ability to learn and thrive”.

“Witnessing the dedication of F4E in tackling childhood hunger in Africa is deeply personal to me. I am honored to support F4E and its innovative approach to transforming lives through nutrition and education, which this extraordinary award by TIME100 so aptly recognizes,” she added.

To assemble the fourth annual Most Influential Companies list, TIME100 gathered nominations from its global network of contributors and correspondents