Sanku Small-scale Fortification
THE PROBLEM
Africa is hardest hit by malnutrition. Most don’t have access to healthy foods, and every meal is primarily starchy flour. Lacking key vitamins and minerals in their diets results in 8,000 children dying globally every day from preventable sicknesses. This must stop!
We add lifesaving micronutrients that are scientifically proven to improve health and vitality, into the food Africans eat the most. How?
Sanku Small-scale Fortification
Despite the increasing adoption of large-scale fortification programs as a means of addressing micronutrient malnutrition throughout the developing world, the majority of individuals living in rural and remote areas do not have access to centrally processed foods, and thus are denied the benefits of these efforts. Addressing this gap becomes critical when considering the fact that these populations are the most vulnerable and in the greatest need of strategies to combat micronutrient malnutrition.
THE SOLUTION
1. Sanku installs a dosifier, which adds a precise amount of critical nutrients to flour, onto the small African flour mills that produce and sell the staple food families eat every day.
2. Sanku offsets the cost of the miller’s nutrients by bulk buying empty pink flour bags, which are then sold to the millers to pack their flour. The savings from each flour bag are enough to cover the entire price of the miller’s nutrients.
3. Sanku monitors the miller’s use of the dosifier remotely through a cellular link, and visits the mill if the dosifier is not in use or needs repair, as well as to restock their nutrients.
THE RESULT
Now it is easy for rural millers to produce quality fortified flour, and families can finally afford to buy and eat healthy food everyday. Children get the key nutrients they need and lives are saved.
OUR STORY
Felix Brooks-church (CEO) and David Dodson (lecturer at Stanford GSB) cofounded Sanku in 2013 as an initiative of the global NGO, Project Healthy Children. Felix led the engineering of the Sanku Dosifier technology, and now leads a dynamic local African team, based out of Tanzania.
The Sanku dosifier technology has been installed across 5 countries throughout East and Southern Africa: Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique.
