Name: How to solve the $3 trillion global economic problem of hunger
Uploaded: 2025-11-11T17:18:50.286Z
Duration: 2 min 54 s
Description: Wawira Njiru, founder and CEO of Food4Education, which provides meals to schoolchildren in Kenya, on how to tackle the global issue of hunger, and scale a business from local communities up.

Wawira Njiru, founder and CEO of Food4Education, which provides meals to schoolchildren in Kenya, on how to tackle the global issue of hunger, and scale a business from local communities up.

A new school feeding model, highlighted by Food for Education, aims to address the $3 trillion annual global economic loss caused by hunger. The approach involves a blended finance system where parents contribute a subsidized amount, governments match funding, and philanthropy covers remaining costs, ensuring all children receive meals.

This ecosystem not only benefits students and their families but also supports local smallholder farmers and suppliers. By sourcing ingredients from local producers and involving the community, the model creates economic opportunities and fosters sustainable growth, as illustrated by the expansion of suppliers like Mary, who grew her business significantly through participation.

How to solve the $3 trillion global economic problem of hunger

What's fascinating to me about the way you've approached your organization is that it's not just about getting donors and supplying food. You're not just putting a Band-Aid on the problem. You're really creating a systematic shift and creating this new ecosystem that's more self-sustaining. Explain to me the way you think about really shifting the mindset and the way this whole system works rather than just having parents pay. You're really getting parents involved. Yes, you know, hunger is an economic problem. It costs three trillion, the world, three trillion dollars we lose every single year because of hunger. And Africa loses 16.5% of its GDP because of hunger. And so as you said, when I was creating and we've created Food for Education, we've created it as a solution towards solving multiple problems at once. And so school feeding, we call it a school feeding economy that we've created. So the parents are involved where they're contributing the subsidized amount. So parents contribute a subsidized amount, use the technology, tap to eat, like I've explained. And then governments match and contribute to subsidize the parents. And then philanthropy covers any other cost that is not covered by both, by either parents or government. And it's blended finance in the sense that you have public participation, you have parents, and then you have philanthropy. And it's a way to make sure that everyone is involved. The anchor of this financing system is a child. Everyone is participating to make sure that the child is able to eat. And by bringing in smart ways where the government can contribute, parents can contribute, and philanthropy can cover the gaps, we're really able to shift how school feeding happens. But in the school feeding economy, it's not just the kids who are benefiting or the parents who are benefiting, it's the entire community. So you find local smallholder farmers who are growing the food, they're growing the ingredients. Today we source over 100 tons of ingredients across the country. And this is from people with like a quarter acre who are growing or one acre of tomatoes, onions, who are growing this and distributing it to our aggregators. Then our aggregators will bring to us and we'll cook the food and deliver it to the children. And so it means that it's an ecosystem of economic benefit, not just for the children and the parents who have a subsidized amount for lunch, it's for everyone who's participating in this, from our suppliers to the children. I like to tell the story of Mary, one of our suppliers. She started supplying to us on a motorbike. And it was really, really, like we've grown with her since 2012. And now she supplies with 65 trucks, 65 trucks of ingredients because that's how much her business has grown and that's how much we've grown.

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