Felix Brooks-church
Malnutrition affects about two billion people globally with preventable deaths of children. These alarming figures have made Felix Brooks-church look closely into the situation and with his four-yearstint in Cambodia working on education and improving the lives of children has spurred him to start Sanku, a social enterprise to combat hunger and malnutrition in Tanzania in 2013.
To tackle malnutrition, the American devised an ingenious solution: A device to fortify flour with nutrients and a business model that ensures there is no extra cost to consumers and millers.
To do this, he developed and patented the ‘dosifier’ a device that looks like an electronic scale and can be installed in small-scale mills, many in isolated areas, which produce up to 95% of the maize flour that is a staple in East Africa.
The dosifier adds vitamin B12, zinc, folic acid and iron to flour. It releases precise quantities of nutrients as the grain flows through its weight-sensitive hopper. Dosifiers are light but strong and transmit data remotely, enabling Brooks-church’s team to monitor thousands of small-scale mills scattered across Tanzania.
His ingenious business model makes the addition of nutrients self-sustaining, costing the millers and consumers nothing. It is based on the purchase of empty flour bags, which are the primary cost for millers and are relatively expensive as millers buy them in small quantities. By buying bags in bulk, Sanku is able to sell them to millers at market price and use the margin to cover the cost of the added nutrients.
With the funding from the Rolex Award Brooks-church plans to purchase 40 dosifiers to transform small-scale mills, which will feed up to 200,000 people with critical nutritious flour. With this he hopes to raise Sanku’s profile to attract additional support to elevate its current reach of two million people.