Feeding Futures: Fellows bridging the gap between farmers and forgotten children

In Nairobi’s informal settlements, thousands of children face daily hunger and malnutrition.

Many attend community-run alternative schools where a single meal, often of poor nutritional value, is all they can rely on.

In areas such as Mukuru kwa Njenga, Mukuru kwa Reuben, Mathare, and Korogocho, access to safe and nutritious food remains out of reach for most families struggling to make ends meet.

At the same time, across Kenya’s rural landscapes, smallholder farmers often watch fresh, organic produce go unsold or to waste.

This stark imbalance reveals a deep disconnect within the country’s food systems, one where abundance coexists with hunger.

Connecting Farmers to Forgotten Children

To address this gap, three African Food Fellowship Fellows, Stephen Muthui, Sylvia Kuria, and Julia Kama, launched the Feeding Futures Initiative, a project connecting organic farmers with alternative schools in informal settlements.

The goal is simple but powerful: to ensure every child, regardless of background, has access to healthy, indigenous, and organic meals that support their growth, education, and well-being.

Speaking about the initiative, Stephen Muthui, an organic farmer and co-founder of Feeding Futures, explained how the idea was born and the change they hope to inspire:

“We practise agroecology, a sustainable approach that integrates relationships between human beings, the environment, and animals, showing how they holistically benefit one another,” says Muthui.

“Together with Sylvia Kuria and Julia Kamau, we’re excited about this initiative in Nairobi. It’s not our first time collaborating as African Food Fellowship Fellows Feeding Futures extends our work in advocacy and training on agroecology and organic farming.”

He adds that the idea emerged from realising that while Kenya produces abundant organic food, many urban families, especially in informal settlements, have little or no access to it.

“We saw a gap among what we call the forgotten children and forgotten groups, people who don’t have choices when it comes to the kind of food they eat,” Muthui explains.

“Farmers grow excellent organic produce, but at the market, people often choose only the best-looking vegetables, leaving behind those that appear weathered, even though they’re perfectly good and nutritious.

We call these ‘second-grade’ foods, and sadly, they often go to waste.”

Feeding Futures aims to bridge this disconnect by bringing nutritious, organic produce directly from farmers to schools in informal settlements.

“Proper nutrition is the foundation of life,” Muthui says.

“When a child is well nourished, their brain develops properly, and they’re able to compete globally. Without that foundation, a child is disadvantaged in many ways.”

A Pilot with Purpose

The pilot phase of the project is underway in Mukuru, where the team is partnering with an alternative school serving 400 children.

These schools are neither public nor private; they cater to children excluded from the formal education system, who often face multiple barriers, including limited access to nutritious food.

“As African Food Fellowship leaders, we believe leadership means going where no one else wants to go and doing what others are unwilling to do,” says Muthui.

“We’re putting our best foot forward, and we know this initiative will grow one school at a time, one institution at a time.”

Women and Farmers at the Heart of Change

Feeding Futures is also collaborating with Mukuru Agribusiness Enterprises, a women-led association engaged in organic produce trading and farming.

This partnership leverages existing community structures to co-create lasting solutions while introducing indigenous and forgotten foods to promote biodiversity conservation.

“We’ve already begun training farmers,” says Muthui.

“Once schools reopen, children will start receiving meals supplied through Feeding Futures. The farmers from Mukuru also benefit, as the initiative creates jobs and helps reduce insecurity in the area.”

Muthui adds that the partnership between the three founders reflects their shared vision and complementary strengths.

“I bring in the training aspect, Julia focuses on access to indigenous foods, and Sylvia uses her business experience to handle logistics and food aggregation,” he explains.

For Muthui, food systems leadership means turning knowledge into tangible action.

“It’s about walking the talk,” he says. “Putting what you’ve learned into practice and being ready to act at any level, at any cost. That’s what true leaders do, they get it done.”

Looking ahead, the Feeding Futures team plans to expand the initiative to other informal settlements such as Kibera, Mathare, and Korogocho.

By scaling up, they hope to reach more children, empower local farmers, and build a more connected, inclusive, and resilient food system, one that ensures no child is left behind in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.

Celebrating Food Systems Leadership

On 24 October 2025, the African Food Fellowship hosted the annual Kenya Transform Food Festival in Nairobi, bringing together leaders from government, the private sector, academia, research institutions, finance, civil society, and community groups to celebrate leadership as a key driver of food systems transformation.

Through a series of well-curated sessions and inspiring discussions, the festival showcased leadership in action and honoured those driving collaboration and innovation towards a sustainable food future.

Speaking during the event, Stella Kimani, Senior Policy Manager at Food for Education and an African Food Fellow, who delivered the keynote speech, said food systems transformation is not just theory but applied courage.

“It’s adaptive, collaborative, and grounded in the belief that Africans can design and scale solutions to Africa’s problems,” she said.

Kimani challenged participants to embrace courageous leadership that bridges ideas and generations.

“We start at the intersection of possibility and responsibility. Your leadership matters. Our continent does not need heroes but architects of systems who build bridges between generations and ideas. Let’s keep experimenting, collaborating, and leading with courage.”

Leadership That Sparks Systemic Change

Africa’s food systems stand at a pivotal moment, offering vast opportunities for transformation.

Earlier this year, the signing of the CAADP Kampala Declaration reaffirmed the continent’s commitment to end hunger by 2035 through increased sustainable agricultural production, tripled intra-African trade in agro-food items, and reduced post-harvest losses.

Ledama Masidza, Connect and Food System Action Lead for the African Food Fellowship, said the festival reflected the culmination of year-long collaborative efforts under the Food System Actions (FSAs) initiative.

“We began planning for this day right after the last Transform Food Festival because a lot of thought goes into crafting and curating such an event. The theme, ‘Leading Differently to Transform Food Systems,’ is deeply embedded in the work we’ve been doing throughout the year,” said Masidza.

He explained that the Food System Actions were designed to address the deep structures shaping Kenya’s food systems policies, power dynamics, incentives, relationships, and markets rather than merely treating surface-level challenges.

“Over the course of the year, we saw our Fellows find their rhythm. We worked with them to curate some of the Food System Actions showcased today from the Aquaculture Learning Hub to reimagining school feeding programmes, a crucial element of our nation’s future,” he said.

Feeding Futures Wins the Food System Action Prize

Masidza highlighted Feeding Futures as one of the most impactful initiatives showcased, reminding participants of “the forgotten schools and the organic farmers who play a vital role in nurturing the next generation.”

“It’s no surprise that they won the Food System Action Prize today,” he added.

The evening culminated in the awarding of the Food System Action Prize, which went to Feeding Futures, an initiative designed by Fellows Julia Kamau, Sylvia Kuria, and Stephen Muthui to deliver nutritious indigenous meals to schoolchildren in Kenya’s informal settlements.

“We envision a country where all children have access to organic and healthy food. This is a right in our constitution, so we’re not doing these children a favour, we’re protecting their rights,” said Muthui, who represented the group at the awards ceremony.

In second place was the Aquaculture Learning Hub, led by Robert Shumari, Salash Leshornai, and Kelvin Muli.

Through their Food Systems Action, the three Fellows are integrating aquaculture and horticulture systems for ASAL (arid and semi-arid lands) resilience, sparking a transformative shift among pastoralist communities.

Guests also had an opportunity to interact with the latest research by the African Food Fellowship, which provides evidence that leadership is a catalytic force that turns good ideas into systems-changing interventions.

Food systems leadership enables collective action and brings multiple stakeholders to the table, including those most marginalised by the existing system, to become co-designers, implementers, and advocates of solutions.

“At the African Food Fellowship, we curate the conditions for people to collaborate and act. We need to change behaviour, shift power dynamics, secure investments and incentives, and influence policy. That’s a human-centred approach,” said Claudia Piacenzia, Head of Networks and Delivery at the African Food Fellowship.

Collaboration: The Cornerstone of Transformation

The success of Feeding Futures and other initiatives showcased at the festival highlights the power of collaboration where policy leaders, farmers, entrepreneurs, and communities unite around a shared vision of a sustainable food future.

Through partnerships and collective leadership, the African Food Fellowship continues to drive dialogue, innovation, and action that strengthen Kenya’s food systems.

This spirit of collaboration will keep sparking change one community, one leader, and one action at a time.