Food for All Africa, the Accra-based organisation operating West Africa’s first and largest circular food bank, has been named one of three winners of the 2026 Barry and Marie Lipman Family Prize, receiving $150,000 in unrestricted funding to expand its operations across Ghana.
The award was presented at the 15th annual Lipman Family Prize ceremony held on April 16 at the Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. Food for All Africa was selected from a pool of more than 300 organisations worldwide. The prize is administered by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and is awarded to organisations demonstrating exceptional leadership, measurable social impact, and innovation that can be replicated elsewhere.
The grand prize of $250,000 went to Kheyti, an Indian social enterprise providing climate-smart greenhouse solutions for smallholder farmers. Barefoot College International, which trains rural women globally as solar engineers and entrepreneurs, received $150,000 alongside Food for All Africa.
Food for All Africa operates by rescuing surplus edible food from farms, manufacturers, and retailers and redistributing it to low-income communities across Ghana. Food deemed unfit for human consumption is converted into useful agricultural inputs through its Black Soldier Fly (BSF) composting units, which produce high-protein animal feed and organic fertiliser for smallholder farmers. The organisation currently serves over 9,000 meals daily, diverts more than 200 tonnes of food waste each month, and has provided food assistance to 73,000 unique individuals since 2021, of whom 62 percent were women and 45 percent were children under 18.
Board Chairman Enoch Aryee-Atta said the funding would support the expansion of the organisation’s food recovery operations, its LunchBox School Feeding Central Kitchen Project, logistics infrastructure, and waste-to-value initiatives, with the goal of reaching more underserved communities nationwide.
Lipman Prize Director Euria Min said Food for All Africa demonstrated how tackling food waste can simultaneously address hunger, environmental sustainability, and economic opportunity, describing its work as locally grounded and high-impact.
In addition to the financial award, all three winning organisations gain access to executive education programmes, research support, and leadership development resources through the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as entry into a global network of social impact organisations.
The recognition places a Ghanaian organisation at the centre of one of the world’s most competitive social impact awards, alongside organisations working in India and globally. It also arrives at a moment of expanding ambition for Food for All Africa, which launched a Black Soldier Fly farm project last year as part of its push toward financial sustainability and circular agriculture at scale.
