Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge 2025 – Seeking innovative solutions against malnutrition in Africa

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 with essential micronutrients, biofortified crops and other ways to improve nutrition across entire food systems in Nigeria and seven other countries in East and West Africa.

Malnutrition is a major public health problem in Nigeria, linked to 45% of all deaths of children under five years of age and the country has the second highest burden of stunted children. Diet accounts for five of the top ten risk factors contributing to disability and death in the country, stemming from poor dietary intake, micronutrient deficiencies, and overconsumption.

GAIN’s Nigeria Country Director, Michael Ojo said, “The dire malnutrition situation in the country indicates significant gaps in our food systems. Together, we need to innovatively tackle this to deliver healthy nutritious diets to all. This challenge aims to mobilise scalable innovations in fortification that can accelerate access for the most vulnerable.”

The Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge 2025 is 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. Additionally, the competition awards US$ 3,000 if your solution is also environmentally sustainable.

Winners will also receive technical assistance to implement and scale their solutions, tailored mentorship from leading experts, training, visibility, and networking opportunities. Industrial food fortification and biofortification are sustainable solutions to micronutrient deficiencies in the continent.

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.

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)

To Apply for the Fortify Forward Innovation Challenge: https://nutritionconnect.org/en/FortifyForward

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.

Press Point of Contact: Victor Ekeleme (Senior Associate, Communication – Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, GAIN [email protected] | +234 07034495081)