- 47 minutes ago
Kenyan entrepreneur Wawira Njiru, founder of one of Africa's largest school feeding programs, wins the German Africa Prize. Meanwhile, violence in southern Ethiopia forces tens of thousands into Kenya.
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00:05Hello, I'm Christine Mundo.
00:07This is DW News Africa.
00:08Coming up on the show,
00:10could the recipe for Africa's future success
00:13begin with a school lunch?
00:15A school feeding program in Kenya
00:17is providing meals to more than 700,000 children every day.
00:21The founder of the initiative, Wawirangiru,
00:23has been awarded this year's German Africa Prize,
00:26and I'll be talking to her on the program.
00:29Plus, another internal conflict has broken out in Ethiopia,
00:33this time in the southern town of Moyale.
00:35It's forced thousands to flee across the border to Kenya.
00:39Could the fighting spill over too?
00:55She started with just 25 children.
00:58Today, she feeds 730,000 every day
01:02with a model that could transform how Africa tackles hunger and education.
01:06It's the reason Kenyan social entrepreneur, Wawirangiru,
01:10has been awarded the 2026 German Africa Prize.
01:14Her NGO, Food for Education,
01:16is now one of Africa's largest school feeding programs.
01:20Jiru received her award at a ceremony in Berlin.
01:24Now, Jiru's model shows how school meals can improve nutrition,
01:28boost school attendance, and support local economies.
01:32How did she build it?
01:33And could the approach help tackle hunger elsewhere in Africa?
01:36Let's find out.
01:39A hot, nutritious school lunch for less than three U.S. cents.
01:43Sounds impossible, but in Kenya,
01:45Wawirangiru is doing it,
01:47hundreds of thousands of times a day.
01:50Less than three cents per meal.
01:52That's like the cheapest meal, I think, in Africa, you know, or in the world.
01:57The cheapest meal in the world.
01:59So, what's her secret?
02:01Fourteen years back, Wawirangiru created Food for Education,
02:05a Kenyan NGO which provides nutritious, affordable meals for schools.
02:09She started by feeding 25 kids.
02:12Today, she runs a massive operation.
02:14My dream then, my ambition, was to feed 100 kids every single day.
02:18I was 21 years old then,
02:20so also having an ambition of feeding 100 kids felt monumentous.
02:26But now, growing up, but also figuring out that you can do more
02:29and just being obsessed with what, how much more can you do,
02:33how much more can you do, led me to here.
02:37Every day, her staff are on their feet in the early morning hours,
02:41filling mounds of rice, beans or lentils into huge pots
02:45and then shipping them off to schools.
02:48The NGO's biggest kitchen, the Giga Kitchen in Nairobi,
02:52serves 60,000 children every day.
02:55All in all, Wawiris team feeds 600,000 school kids around the country.
03:00When kids go to public schools, a lot of times they're coming from home sometimes
03:05that their parents don't have a lot of income
03:07or they're struggling to sort of make ends meet.
03:09And so providing food at school is very, very critical.
03:14In Kenya, around 2.6 million children currently receive school lunches
03:19through either government or NGO programs.
03:22And the government has big goals to scale this even more.
03:26In Nairobi, Wawiris team partners with the city county,
03:29which subsidizes part of the food.
03:31Since they joined forces, Nairobi schools who benefit from this
03:35have experienced better student performance and school attendance.
03:40You know, food is everything.
03:42When you are so much as nothing, you cannot understand it in class.
03:46The school offered lunches in the past,
03:48but only a quarter of the students could afford it.
03:52There's a difference because there are some students
03:54who are finding accessing food very easy
03:57because their parents are available,
03:59while there are others who can't afford food
04:01and they feel as if it's unfair,
04:04as if there's something lacking in them.
04:06So it really demoralizes them and reduces their confidence.
04:09Today, that's no longer the case.
04:11Remember, three U.S. cents per meal?
04:14That's possible because Food for Education
04:16gets two-thirds of its funding from donors.
04:19It gets funding from government and parents pay the rest.
04:23Meals are tracked via the so-called tap-to-eat system,
04:26where each child has a wristband which registers every meal.
04:31In Nairobi, where the city subsidizes the meal,
04:34parents pay just a very small sum.
04:36So for five shillings, which is less than three cents per meal,
04:40the child is able to get a meal every single day.
04:43That's like the cheapest meal, I think, in Africa,
04:47you know, or in the world, essentially.
04:50For the Food for Education team, it's all in the numbers.
04:54The tap-to-eat wristbands not only monitor the parents' payments,
04:58they also track how many meals are served.
05:01And if students don't eat the food, they can find out why.
05:05So far, this school appears to be on track
05:07and the students seem happy with the food.
05:10They feel like it's nutritious, which it is for them.
05:14They get full.
05:15I ask them what they want us to add to the meals.
05:18They've said chicken, chips, you know, all the things that kids want.
05:23I don't think we're going to add chicken and chips,
05:25but also I had to tell them it's not really good
05:29to eat chicken and chips every day.
05:31Years of experience have taught Wawera
05:33to handle the wishes and demands of the schools, governments and donors.
05:38She's also learned to keep her costs low and be efficient.
05:43Nearly all of Food for Education's ingredients are sourced from local farmers.
05:47And her team runs the kitchen like a well-oiled machine.
05:51Even today, I think, what the hell am I doing?
05:55But from 25 kids to now,
05:58I feel like there's not one challenge that we haven't overcome.
06:02The kids are still being fed.
06:03And when you go to the schools and you see, like today,
06:06where the kids are still eating,
06:09and the system is working because of the systems that we build
06:11and the amazing team that we have,
06:13then you realize that, okay, I can figure out the next challenge and the next challenge.
06:17Today, Wawera is a bit of a celebrity.
06:21Who would have thought that what started as a university project
06:24would end up on this scale?
06:26Wawera's initial goal was to feed 100 students.
06:30Now, she feeds 600,000.
06:33Her next goal, to reach 1 million.
06:37And I am very happy to be joined by Wawera Jiru.
06:41Welcome to DW News Africa,
06:43and congratulations on being awarded this year's German Africa Prize,
06:47Wawera.
06:49I listened to a TED Talk you gave recently
06:51where you were making the point that feeding children in schools
06:54is more than charity
06:55because, you know, people often think of such initiatives as humanitarian.
07:00But can you tell us about the economic cost
07:02of African countries having millions of children going to school hungry?
07:08That's a really good question.
07:10You know, one of the things that Food for Education started off because of
07:14is because the cost of having kids hungry is everything.
07:18You know, it's not just their hungry bellies.
07:20It's what they would contribute to the economy.
07:23It's estimated that Africa loses up to 16.5 percent of its GDP because of hunger.
07:31Majority of our population right now is young.
07:33They're actually in classrooms.
07:34And so not giving them the right nutrition is a cost that we can't bear.
07:39And so Food for Education exists so that kids can get the right nutrition in school
07:43so that they can grow up to live to their potential and contribute to economies.
07:49Now, most of the food that you serve in your school feeding program
07:53is sourced from local smallholder farmers.
07:56Tell us why this is particularly important.
07:59It's very, very important for us to source locally because we really want to strengthen
08:03the local economies.
08:05We want to build that economic infrastructure of what school feeding is and can be.
08:10And so that structured demand for farmers allows them to know that, you know,
08:14every single day they can provide their ingredients, they can grow comfortably,
08:19knowing that once they invest in their farms, there's somewhere that they can sell their produce.
08:24So they figure out everything that's required to make sure that they're able to grow those
08:29cabbages, those tomatoes, those beans, lentils, so that they're able to provide to the school meals.
08:36And how has the use of data and technology changed the way that you're able to feed children in schools?
08:44So data and technology is very central.
08:47I call it, you know, feeding kids is very, very operational.
08:50And if you miss one cost or one set of data point, it means that you're not able to do
08:55it efficiently.
08:56So, for example, every single day we're predicting how many kids we're cooking for so that we can make sure
09:03that every child who's coming to school and the kids who are not coming to school, you know,
09:07because of many things that happen within the home, you know, absenteeism and things like that,
09:12the ones who are in school are being cooked for.
09:14So this reduces our wastage to under 1% to 2%, making sure that we're using technology to predict every
09:22single day.
09:23We also involve parents in how they contribute for their meals.
09:27So we use a technology called Tap to Eat that we've developed in-house that relies on mobile money,
09:33which has 96% penetration in Kenya.
09:36So parents are contributing to the meals that we're providing every single day, a subsidized amount,
09:41but it's giving them dignity. It's giving them a voice. It's giving them the ability to feed their own children.
09:47And we use that data then to make our operations more efficient and to make sure that kids are getting
09:52nutritious meals every single day.
09:54We also use that data to make sure that kids, to see how kids are liking the meals.
10:00So we get to see, for example, when they're, we can reach out to the parents, we can call them,
10:04we have a customer care line, and that enables us to make sure that kids are liking the meals
10:10and they're also eating them every single day.
10:12Incredible. Well, can the model that you have built in Kenya be replicated in countries where the conditions are more
10:20difficult?
10:21For example, where infrastructure is weak, where food prices are high?
10:28That's a good question. And we know that, you know, 70% of the continent, over 70% of the
10:33continent in Africa, is actually rural.
10:36There's rapid urbanization happening.
10:38But one of the things we needed to figure out as we built out the model and the blueprint of
10:44school feeding
10:44is how do we feed kids in rural areas where the conditions, as you've said, are more difficult,
10:50where roads sometimes do not exist, where infrastructure, especially public infrastructure, is not very common.
10:56Right now, you know, we feed many kids in rural areas, and we're building this year about 200 kitchens around
11:03rural Kenya
11:04to increase our footprint within rural Kenya.
11:07This is to make sure that more kids are getting meals in rural areas,
11:12but also that we're building a blueprint that can be scaled across the continent.
11:16And that blueprint can apply in Zambia, which is one of the countries that we're scaling to,
11:21that we've partnered with the Ministry of Education and the government of Zambia.
11:25Other countries that we're working with, for example, the African Development Bank on,
11:29on a fund called the End School Age Hunger Fund.
11:31And these countries have various types of geography, various types of urbanization,
11:36and we're making sure that the blueprint that we've created is able to serve kids and can be contextualized.
11:43Because it's very important when you're in Ethiopia, injera and rice and pap and different types of meals,
11:50contextualizing that and producing that in the same ways of efficiency is really, really important.
11:55And can you share one of the lessons that you've learned about building a social enterprise in Africa?
12:06One lesson. There are so many lessons that I've learned about building a social enterprise.
12:10Yeah, and I thought, let me just stir it in on one.
12:13Yeah. I think, you know, building in Africa is unlike building anywhere else.
12:19You know, you build the car while you're driving it, and you build the road that you're driving on as
12:24well.
12:24And so I think building in Africa requires an end-to-end thinking.
12:28And you can't just come and say, this is the one solution that I have to provide.
12:32You have to think about the entire ecosystem, and then you have to think about partnerships across the entire system.
12:38So from parents to the people who you're serving, for us, it's parents and the kids, to government.
12:44And you really have to work with the government as well, because, you know,
12:47they're the ones who are guiding and leading a lot of the work in the countries that you work in.
12:52And so I think building in Africa is very worth it, very challenging.
12:57And I think the impact, to me, is very worth it because you're able to really move the needle
13:02on a lot of the things that should be basic and should be provided.
13:07Right. So you've been awarded this year's German Africa Prize for demonstrating what African innovation can achieve, right?
13:16And I think from what you've just said, one could say, if you can make it in Africa, you can
13:21make it anywhere.
13:22But this is, of course, recognition of the impact that you are making.
13:27But what do you want this win to be about?
13:32I think, you know, as you've said, it's the recognition of the work that we've done and I think the
13:36potential of what more can be done.
13:39We've had, you know, great success within Kenya and, you know, credit to so many people, our local governments, our
13:45parents,
13:46different partners that have worked with us.
13:48But I think this win and the German Africa Prize, to me, is an opportunity to show what can be
13:54done across Kenya, but across the continent.
13:57It's my first time in Germany.
13:58I've actually never been.
14:00And I'm really grateful to be here through this way as a first way, because I think Germany has a
14:05really important role in the world right now
14:07and leading on what development can look like from a form of partnership, from a form of working with local
14:13actors
14:14and making sure that development is done really well and also done sustainably.
14:19And a quick one before you go.
14:21You mentioned it earlier in our conversation.
14:23You've said that your goal is to feed or be feeding one million children every day.
14:28By 2030.
14:29Are you?
14:31Yes.
14:31And I have good news.
14:33It's actually not.
14:33It's going to be sooner than 2030.
14:36It'll be around mid next year.
14:38So we're still on track ahead of track.
14:41And it's very exciting.
14:42Yeah.
14:43Well, you're an inspiration.
14:45Thank you so much.
14:46And congratulations on this incredible achievement.
14:51Thank you so much for having me.
14:59Another front of fighting has broken out in Ethiopia.
15:02This time, the conflict is in the south of the country, in a town called Moyale.
15:07Now, Moyale sits right on the Ethiopia-Kenya border.
15:10It is effectively one town divided between two countries.
15:15There is the Kenyan side and the Ethiopian side.
15:18Now, fighting broke out in the Ethiopian side, and it has caused at least 50,000 people to flee over
15:25the border to the Kenyan side.
15:27Now, on the Ethiopian side of Moyale, there is another dividing line.
15:31The town is split between two of Ethiopia's regional states, that's Oromia and Somali.
15:38Now, the two regions both control parts of the town, making Moyale a sensitive flashpoint.
15:45Now, there are longstanding territorial disputes between Oromia and Somali over Moyale.
15:51In a moment, I will be joined by an expert to tell us what has caused the latest fighting.
15:57But first, DW's Sela Oneko filed this report from the Kenyan side of Moyale.
16:04These men, women and children fled the fighting in Ethiopia.
16:08They're seeking refuge across the border in Kenya.
16:11Here, aid organizations have turned a local school into an emergency camp.
16:16Fawas Ahmed arrived earlier today.
16:20We were on the Kenyan side of the border, waiting for things to calm down so that we can go
16:24back.
16:25From there, we could see everything.
16:29The bomb house, there was inside a mother and father and their daughter.
16:40The mother and the daughter have died, and the father is late, broke, and he's in hospital now.
16:49The Kenya Red Cross, UNHCR and local authorities are registering new arrivals and providing essential aid.
16:56Those displaced are also pitching in, helping to prepare meals and organize food distributions.
17:01As the displaced are moving here, there are quite some needs that these people have.
17:05For them to live in dignity, we have to provide them with food, shelter.
17:10Health-wise, we have to look at how they're improving their health.
17:14Nutrition, we are screening the under-fives.
17:19Ades Bekele shows us the classroom where he's sleeping.
17:22He says he left home with just his clothes.
17:25During the start of the war, before I didn't have any information.
17:31By that time, when the start of the war, only by this, I moved to my house.
17:37Bekele is originally from Tigray, in northern Ethiopia.
17:41He'd been living on the Ethiopian side of Moyale for a year, after leaving Tigray due to the insecurity there.
17:47Having already experienced war in Tigray, his outlook on the situation is bleak.
17:52Maybe they will stop for one week or two weeks. After that, they start. So, by this situation, life is
18:03difficult.
18:04Moyale lies on the Kenya-Ethiopia border, with one half in each country.
18:09The town is a vital hub for trade and travel.
18:13Videos shared with us show heavy fighting overnight, with stray bullets crossing into Kenya.
18:20Just behind me is the Ethiopian border, and many people who are here right now have fled from the Ethiopian
18:26side of town to the Kenyan side of Moyale town.
18:29This is usually a very busy border crossing, but as the fighting is going on there, many of the trucks
18:34here are stranded, and the trade has stopped.
18:36These drivers say they've been stuck here for days.
18:40One driver tells us he was supposed to transport industrial equipment to Ethiopia.
18:44We don't know exactly what's happening, because we're seeing bullets everywhere.
18:50Then they say it's going to calm down. But we're not hopeful.
18:55After our team left, the first deaths and several injuries from stray bullets were reported on the Kenyan side of
19:00the border.
19:01The scale of displacement is unprecedented, with large numbers crossing into Kenya in a matter of days.
19:09Many have found shelter with friends and relatives, but local officials warned that communities could soon come under strain.
19:15Local leaders visited the school, now serving as a temporary shelter, to assess the growing humanitarian needs.
19:23We need to be, to act very fast, and in case we need to receive more people coming on this
19:29side, we need to have food, we need to have enough accommodation,
19:33so we need some serious, serious support from the government, the local leaders, and internationally.
19:42Again, we need to pray that peace be in Ethiopia.
19:48Aid is slowly reaching those in need, but the UN is appealing for 8.9 million US dollars in additional
19:55support.
19:56For now, uncertainty persists, as concerns grow that fighting could spread across the border.
20:05And we've invited Dr. Halkano Wario onto the program.
20:08He's an expert on security and governance in East Africa, as well as in the Horn of Africa.
20:13He is the Associate Director at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism, Violent Extremism and Radicalisation at the Horn
20:22International Institute for Strategic Studies.
20:25Welcome to DW News Africa, Dr. Wario.
20:28So, we know that there are long-standing territorial disputes in Ethiopia over the Ethiopian side of the town of
20:36Moyale.
20:37But what has triggered this latest flare-up?
20:41Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.
20:44So, the incident occurred on 18th of October last month.
20:49So, a new Somali regional state administration office was opened in Moyale,
20:54and a Somali regional flag was raised.
20:57And immediately afterwards, there was gun exchange between regional security forces associated with Somali regional state and the Oromo regional
21:05state.
21:05In that exchange of fire, a 13-year-old girl was killed.
21:10And thereafter, we've seen violence and exchanges that involve not just small kind of arms, but heavy weaponry between two
21:18regional states and associated militias and armed civilian militias.
21:22So far, we've not seen the federal government, the federal army step in.
21:27So, as of today and yesterday, the fighting is still on.
21:32And we've not seen this unabated.
21:35So, this particular incident of raising flag by the Somali regional state in a region,
21:40in one of the regions that is disputed between the two regional states in that town sparked off this violence.
21:47Right. And can you tell us why control of the Ethiopian side of Moyale is so contested between the regions
21:57of Oromia and Somali,
21:59who both have a level of administration over the town?
22:04At the core of it, again, for me, when I look at this region, is the economic value,
22:10the speculative value that Moyale is attracting over the years.
22:13Moyale is the main gateway between Kenya and Ethiopia.
22:18And whoever controls this town also has very strong control over revenue, over trade, over contraband route, over jobs.
22:25And my understanding is being a town that links Kenya and Ethiopia through the lapsed project that Kenya is running
22:33through,
22:34Lamoport, and all kind of investment that is being done there,
22:36the town's premium has continuously grown.
22:41And therefore, the speculative economic interest also fuels this competition between these two regions.
22:49Right. And Ethiopia is already dealing with multiple internal conflicts,
22:54including renewed fighting in the northern Tigray region.
22:58How significant is this flashpoint in Moyale?
23:03It is significant at two levels.
23:06One, if you consider that this is a flashpoint between two regional states,
23:11the Somali regional state and the Oromo regional state,
23:13in which the federal government is not, at the moment,
23:17have considerable leverage on in terms of what it can do,
23:21it is a huge flashpoint.
23:23And particularly important for me is also the fact that this town sits close to the Kenya border,
23:30where the same, same communities and other communities again reside in.
23:34So possibilities of spillover of this violence into the Kenyan region.
23:38And the fact that we've already seen some sort of attacks in towns where these two communities share
23:45makes this violence particularly unsettling for Ethiopia,
23:50when it's already dealing with multiple flashpoints in the north, in the west,
23:54in the Amhara region, in Tigray region, in parts of Oromo region.
23:58So when you have now violence occurring, again, between Somali region and Oromia region,
24:04then that is particularly a huge, huge, huge disruptive violence that, again,
24:10will require federal forces or federal government to start paying attention to.
24:16You talked about how this could potentially spill over into Kenya.
24:20Is there anything, then, that the government in Kenya could do on a diplomatic front
24:25to assist in resolving this latest flare-up?
24:31Kenya and Ethiopia enjoy considerable diplomatic relation and cordial relation,
24:35especially at the cross-border section.
24:37So we've already seen incredible effort that has been put together by the Kenyan administration
24:43through humanitarian agencies like the UN agencies and other civil organizations that are on the ground.
24:50So over 50,000 people have already been displaced in the Kenyan side.
24:54So what we are seeing is the Kenyan security forces, the administrative structures,
24:58trying to address these displaced persons in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance is offered.
25:05But at the same time, using the mechanism, the cross-border peace committees,
25:11cross-border civil society organization relation,
25:13and also traditional community conflict resolution system between the Garrys and the Boran,
25:20who are also resident on the Kenyan side of the borders,
25:23these are the mechanisms that had solved similar kind of violence before.
25:28And I am pretty certain that both governments will look at possibilities
25:32of also using local mechanisms to address some of these issues, yes.
25:37All right, that is the insights from Dr. Halkano Wario.
25:40We appreciate that. Thank you.
25:44Thank you so much.
25:46And that is it for the program.
25:47Be sure to check out our other stories on dw.com forward slash Africa or on social media.
25:54Thank you for your company. It's been good having your time.
25:56See you next time. Bye-bye.
26:03Bye-bye.
26:05Bye-bye.
26:06Bye-bye.
26:06Bye-bye.