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Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge 2025 - Seeking innovative fortification solutions against malnutrition in Africa
Sponsored by GAIN
NAIROBI, 10 March, 2025 - The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and partners have launched a regional competition inviting innovative solutions for enhancing the nutritional value of food through fortification and to improve nutrition interventions across entire food systems in Kenya and seven other countries in East and West Africa.
Commenting on the Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge, GAIN’s Executive Director, Lawrence Haddad said, “Our vision is to promote healthier and more nutritious diets in Africa, while fostering sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems. The Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge is an effort in that direction that seeks scalable and sustainable innovations related to the fortification of foods that reach vulnerable populations. Fortifying food can be the one of the pillars of our joint efforts to combat malnutrition - an investment in a healthier future for Africa”.
Malnutrition is a major public health challenge in Kenya, like many parts of the continent, mostly among children. The Kenya National Micronutrient Survey of 2011 depicted the country as burdened by high micronutrient deficiencies with the most prevalent being zinc, vitamin A, iron, and iodine deficiencies.
Zinc deficiency prevalence rates stood at 70 percent, with preschool children being most affected at 81.6 percent, school-age children at 79.0 percent, pregnant women at 67.9 percent, and non-pregnant women at 79.9 percent.
GAIN Kenya Country Director, Ruth Okowa elaborates that “an estimated 23 million Kenyans are undernourished, and malnutrition in all its forms remains a pressing concern—disproportionately affecting women, children, and vulnerable communities, particularly in urban slums and arid and semi-arid regions. The persistence of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and rising cases of overweight and obesity threatens not only individual well-being but also the country’s social and economic progress.”
As a result, the Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge 2025 is a timely initiative that will address some of the most pressing malnutrition (micronutrient deficiency) concerns in the country.
The challenge is therefore inviting applications from entrepreneurs and startups, researchers and academics, innovators, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), food producers and suppliers (including farmers, millers, and processors).
The application window is open until March 28, 2025, for submission of entries of innovative solutions that improve access to essential vitamins and minerals through either large-scale industrial food fortification or nutrient-enriched crops (biofortification and its related processes).
The Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge 2025 will award US$5,000 to each of the ten winners across each of the three competition categories. The categories are: Profitable and sustainable business models for fortification, Overcoming challenges of aggregation and/or segregation in biofortification, and Innovative vehicles for food fortification.
Winners will also receive technical assistance to implement and scale their solutions, tailored mentorship from leading experts, training, visibility, and networking opportunities.
To be eligible for the Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge applicants must be agencies or individuals based in one of the participating countries, with workable, and proven innovations that can be from diverse sectors, including agriculture, food processing, logistics, nutrition, public health, agrotechnology, or others.
The innovations must have been tested and operational for at least a year, and should have plans to scale-up in future to address nutritional deficiencies in vulnerable communities through food fortification (industrial food fortification and biofortification)
This challenge to improve the nutritional quality of staple foods from farm to fork is organised by GAIN, and supported by The Waterloo Foundation, Funguo Program by United Nations Development Programme-Tanzania, DSM-Firmenich, NMB Foundation, Alliance of Biodiversity & CIAT, and University of Abomey Calavi-Benin.
About GAIN
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition. Working with governments, businesses and civil society, we aim to transform food systems so that they deliver healthier diets for all people, especially the most vulnerable.
Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, GAIN has offices in countries with high levels of malnutrition: Bangladesh, Benin, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. To support work in those countries, we have representative offices in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
