Delivering Vital Nutrients

Thanks to the Zayed Sustainability Prize

Scroll down to learn more about hidden hunger and Sanku’s work ↓

In 2019, Sanku was a team of ten reaching a couple of hundred thousand people in Tanzania. As of mid-2026, we reach around 70 million people across Eastern Africa. The Prize was one of the early forces behind this growth.

“Winning the Prize came at a point when we were still a small organisation. Early backing like that is catalytic, and it changed what Sanku could become.”

Felix Brooks-church, Co-founder and CEO, Sanku

About the Prize

The Zayed Sustainability Prize is the UAE’s pioneering award for innovative solutions to global challenges. Inspired by the legacy and vision of the UAE’s founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Prize advances sustainable development worldwide. Each year, it rewards organisations and high schools across Health, Food, Energy, Water, Climate Action and Global High Schools for solutions that strengthen communities and advance sustainable development. Sanku won the Food category in 2019.

WatchFelix Brooks-church at TED2026.

The problem, and how it gets solved

Hidden hunger affects three billion people: diets that fill stomachs but lack essential vitamins and minerals. The consequences are severe, holding back brain development, weakening immune systems, and harming mothers and babies.

Fortification is one of the most evidence-based and cost-effective health interventions there is, and it has been standard practice in high-income countries for decades. Across most of Eastern Africa, the infrastructure to deliver it at scale has not existed. We’re building it, at the mill, in the space between the farmer and the family.

The Dosifier, reaching the last mile

Most fortification programmes focus on large industrial mills. That leaves out the small and medium mills that serve many last-mile communities, where hidden hunger is often most severe.

Sanku was built to reach those mills. At the centre of the model is the Dosifier, an automated machine that adds a precise amount of nutrients as flour is produced, making fortification part of the normal milling process. Once installed, it can operate for years, turning a one-time investment into lasting nutrition infrastructure.

WatchOn a Mission to End Hidden Hunger (presented by Rolex).

WatchTake a tour of our nutrient premix factory.

The factory, made in Eastern Africa

Every miller needs a reliable supply of nutrient premix, the vitamins and minerals added to flour during fortification. Historically it has been imported into Eastern Africa, making it costly and vulnerable to disruption.

So Sanku built Eastern Africa’s first nutrient premix factory in Tanzania in 2024 (made possible by a 2021 unrestricted gift from MacKenzie Scott), followed by a second in Ethiopia in 2026. Local production cuts costs, improves quality, and protects supply. Sanku also makes and sells the flour bags mills need, using the margin to neutralise the cost of premix, so families pay no more for fortified flour.

The road to one billion

Sanku’s next milestone is 100 million people by 2028. The longer goal, which Felix set out at TED2026, is to expand to ten countries in ten years and reach one billion people a year with vital nutrients.

We’re hopeful and excited about partners who’ll work with us to enter each new country and build the infrastructure it takes (including a third nutrient premix factory) to make it real.