91丝瓜视频

Inaugural Global Student Case Competition:

Breaking silos to improve nutritional outcomes in Ghana

As a flagship initiative under the Nkabom Collaborative, 91丝瓜视频's Sustainable Growth Initiative (SGI) Office of Sustainable Africa invited students to apply interdisciplinary thinking, policy innovation, and collaborative problem-solving to address Africa鈥檚 most pressing sustainable development challenges in the Nkabom Africa Case Competition. This hybrid inaugural edition of the competition focused on engaging participants to propose solutions to break silos across industrial sectors (agri-food, health, and education) and societal sectors (business, government, and civil society), with the aim of improving nutritional outcomes, taking Ghana as a starting point. Teams analyzed the problem, developed evidence-based proposals, and presented actionable strategies grounded in research, local context, and systems-thinking approaches.

Participants shared their findings, and judges selected the teams with the most outstanding solutions. The top five winning teams鈥� solutions are being further developed and implemented within the Nkabom Collaborative. The Nkabom Collaborative is a multi-stakeholder partnership with the Mastercard Foundation that brings together 91丝瓜视频, six Ghanaian educational institutions, and an industry partner to transform Ghana鈥檚 nutrition and agri-food ecosystem by creating opportunities for youth-led impact through experiential learning, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Highlight of the Competition Winners

1^st Place

Eastside Sankofa Industries Ghana | University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD), Ghana

Turning Waste into Nutrition: Reconfiguring Local Mango Supply Networks to Improve Diet Diversity through Schools in Yilo Krobo, Ghana

Eastside Sankofa Industries Ghana is a youth-led initiative focused on transforming postharvest agricultural losses into practical nutrition solutions. Our competition project addresses two connected challenges in Ghana related to stakeholders working in silos: significant mango waste during peak seasons and limited fruit inclusion in school meals, due to lack of coordination between agricultural production, processing, supply, and consumption.

In fruit-producing districts such as Yilo Krobo, many mangoes are lost each season due to weak aggregation systems, limited processing capacity, and unstable market access. At the same time, many schools face challenges providing diverse and nutritious meals for children.

Our solution reconnects these broken links by creating a localized mango supply network that aggregates surplus fruit, processes it into shelf-stable products such as mango bites, juice, and pur茅e, and supplies schools through structured feeding channels.

The model supports farmers with reliable demand, improves access to nutritious food for children, creates jobs for youth and women, and reduces food waste through value addition. By using low-energy processing systems, solar drying methods, and a scalable hub model, the solution offers a practical pathway for strengthening food systems and nutrition outcomes across Ghana.

Our pilot vision is to begin in Yilo Krobo by working with local farmers, supplying selected schools, and validating a replicable model that can be expanded to other fruit-producing districts nationwide.

2^nd Place

Biotechnology for African Nutrition Collaborative(BANC) | University of Ghana (UG) & Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana

Leveraging Ethnobotany, Research, Biotechnology and Micro livestock to Solve the Triple Burden of Malnutrition

Ghana is currently facing a "triple burden" of malnutrition鈥攕tunting, micronutrient deficiencies, and rising obesity鈥攄riven by a shift away from nutrient-dense local flora toward climate-vulnerable foreign crops. The Biotechnology for African Nutrition Collaborative (BANC) aims to reverse this trend through Primary and Secondary Anchored Indigenous Nutrition Innovation Hubs (SAINI).

Anchored in primary and secondary schools, our project seeks to break silos by integrating industry-informed research with practical pedagogy. We specialize in:

Ethnobotanical Recovery: Reclassifying forgotten "weeds" like Bokoboko and Moringa as ancestral superfoods through collaboration with elders and research institutes (WACCI/CSIR).

Microlivestock & Mushroom production: Implementing school-based quail and mushroom farming to provide rapid, affordable access to high-quality proteins and vitamins.

Circular Economy: Transforming organic waste into mushroom substrate and fertilizer, creating self-sustaining school enterprises.

Capacity Building: We train students and community members in nutrition, food processing and preservation.

By rebranding indigenous crops and training students in modern biotechnology and microlivestock management, BANC improves school feeding programs while generating surplus income for local communities. Our phased three-year plan transitions these hubs into district breeding centers, scaling a climate-resilient, youth-led solution to food insecurity across Ghana.

Our Goal is to bridge the nutritional gap, preserve cultural heritage, and foster entrepreneurial skills in the next generation of Ghanaian leaders.

3^rd Place

Edunet | Arizona State University (ASU), USA

Get Nkosuo: A Digital Nutrition and School Feeding Innovation for Ghana

Get Nkosuo (鈥淕et Progress鈥�) is a multi-sided digital solution designed to improve nutritional outcomes in Ghana by connecting schools, local food suppliers, youth, and institutional stakeholders through one coordinated ecosystem. Developed by Team EduNet, the solution addresses the structural disconnect between school feeding, nutrition education, and local agricultural value chains鈥攖ransforming school feeding from a standalone welfare intervention into a scalable driver of learning, livelihoods, and community resilience.

The solution integrates three core components: GetFood, a school feeding procurement and supplier coordination system; GetSkills, a practical learning and certification model focused on nutrition, agri-food entrepreneurship, and school feeding capacity building; and GetData, a lightweight analytics layer that supports evidence-based decision-making across the ecosystem. Together, these components create a closed-loop model that improves access to nutritious meals, strengthens supplier participation, and equips youth and food system actors with practical, market-relevant skills.

Get Nkosuo was designed in response to the Nkabom Africa Case Competition challenge to break silos across the agri-food, health, and education sectors in Ghana. Grounded in systems thinking and aligned with the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, the model positions schools as hubs for nutrition access, workforce development, and local economic participation. By combining nutrition access with capacity building and coordinated delivery, Get Nkosuo offers a practical and scalable pathway to strengthen school feeding systems and improve community nutrition outcomes in Ghana

4^th Place

Okuafo Adanfo | University of Cambridge, UK

Nutri Box by Okuafo Adanfo

Okuafo Adanfo addresses the systemic failure of child nutrition in Ghana by transforming school feeding from a subsidy-dependent intervention into a self-sustaining ecosystem. While the existing Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) suffers from poor meal quality, centralized procurement, and fragmented policy oversight, our solution, NutriBox breaks these silos by integrating agriculture, education, and health.

At its core, NutriBox utilizes a self-sustaining cross-subsidy model. By providing premium, nutritious meal services to private schools, we generate the necessary revenue to fund high-quality, locally sourced lunches for students in public schools within food-insecure regions like Karaga. This financial mechanism ensures stability and reduces reliance on volatile government grants.

Beyond providing meals, NutriBox serves as a "living laboratory." We integrate nutrition education directly into the school experience, using biodegradable packaging as a pedagogical tool to teach children about food sources, health, and sustainability. Our operational framework prioritizes supply chain resilience by contracting multiple local farmers per ingredient, utilizing SMS demand forecasting, and maintaining buffer stocks to mitigate post-harvest losses and market inconsistencies.

By aligning agricultural supply with local nutritional needs and fostering community-led food safety, NutriBox does more than fill plates. We are creating a replicable, scalable model that empowers local farmers, improves academic outcomes, and creates economic opportunities for youth. By 2030, our goal is to scale this model nationally, proving that cross-sectoral, youth-led solutions are the key to breaking the cycle of poverty and achieving true food security in rural communities.

5^th Place

SPIAfrica | Princeton University, USA

Caterer Hub

The Caterer Hub is a shared learning and resource platform that enables Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) caterers to collaborate, access pooled services (finance, procurement, infrastructure, logistics, digital), and upgrade their operational and nutritional capacity. By strengthening caterers as professional food service providers, the Hub transforms GSFP from a fragile safety net into an anchor platform for improved nutrition, accountable service delivery, and local enterprise development across Ghana.