Social entrepreneur Felix Brooks-church has been tackling one of the world’s greatest afflictions, malnutrition. A Rolex Awards Laureate, Brooks-church has developed an ingenious device to fortify flour with nutrients and also a business model that ensures there is no extra cost to consumers or millers, and the fortified flour can be sold at the same price as the unfortified product. With the creation of the “dosifier” – the groundbreaking machine delivering precisely measured doses of essential micronutrients like iron, B12 and zinc into grains during the milling process – Brooks-church is helping to eradicate malnutrition, one fortified bag of flour at a time.

Since 2015, Brooks-church’s social enterprise Sanku has installed dosifiers in hundreds of flour mills across Tanzania. With the support of the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, it has now expanded operations into Ethiopia – a move made possible by the micronutrient blending factory Brooks-church established in Tanzania, which supplies pre-mixed vitamins and minerals directly to local mills, guaranteeing availability and reducing reliance on global supply chains.

This expansion is directly tackling malnutrition, which continues to be a reality all over the world. According to Brooks-church, around 8,000 children under the age of five die every single day from poor nutrition.

“This is a dream come true,” explains Brooks-church. “When we install a dosifier and we see that powder come out, and those life-saving nutrients in the flour, it gets packed, sold to a shop, and that gets sold to a mother – that’s the work I love.”

After two decades in the field, the entrepreneur’s tenacity and dedication are coming to fruition. Sanku now works with around 1,500 mills across Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia, employing 120 local residents and reaching close to 25 million consumers. “We are already a quarter of the way towards our goal of 100 million people by 2030, which we think we’ll reach in the next couple of years. It’ll be a lot of work, but it’s definitely achievable”, says Brooks-church.

His radical ambition – to eradicate malnutrition on a global scale – is making huge waves in east Africa; the factory is already producing enough premix to enrich 3.6 billion plates of food every year. This, however, is only the beginning – Sanku is currently building a second premix factory in Ethiopia, where the main crop is wheat, and just 400 large scale mills serve a population of 120 million. In contrast, poorer communities most affected by malnutrition in Tanzania and Kenya source their staple food, maize flour, from village mills.

“Being in Ethiopia is exciting because it’s a new opportunity,” explains Brooks-church. “Fortification is brand new here, and the potential impact is huge.”

The recent expansion into Ethiopia is the culmination of a decades-long backstory beginning in Cambodia, where Brookschurch worked as a volunteer helping to reintegrate street children into society. Insufficient nutrition, he realised, was essentially the root cause of the children’s problems. “They were often sick. They had weak immune systems and lower IQs, as most children were lacking these essential nutrients before the age of 5 years old,” he recalls.

Estimates suggest as many as two billion people worldwide suffer from some form of micronutrient deficiency. The issue is not so much quantity of food, explains Brookschurch, as quality. “The stomach might be full, but you’re starving from lack of critical vitamins and minerals that you typically find in a varied diet,” he says.

The robust and durable dosifier was to play a key role in the long-term success of the enterprise. Painstakingly developed in the tiny metal shops in the foothills of the Himalayas, where Brooks-church was based at the time, the improved model has now been rolled out across Ethiopia, featuring a detector that can identify the level of premix, automatically filling up the machine’s premix compartment when the mill is turned on. The upgraded dosifier can also work with wheat as the grain, and both the miller and Sanku are alerted if the premix level is low, which is critical in Ethiopia, where fortification has never been done before.

More than 12 years after Sanku was launched, the contacts Brooks-church has made along the way have added weight and momentum to the project. For example, Walter Miya, founder of The Mwadeta School and Centre in Vikindu village in Tanzania, has started providing Sanku’s fortified flour to Miya’s school, providing the children with what Brooks-church calls the “basic human right” of good nutrition.

Looking to the future, Brooks-church plans to expand his enterprise further across East Africa. “I’m super proud to be enabling mills to literally produce life-saving flour,” says Brooks-church. “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing.”

ABOUT THE PERPETUAL PLANET INITIATIVE
Rolex celebrates human achievement, recognizing journeys marked by milestones and emotions that culminate in defining moments. Achievement is a path followed towards excellence.

For nearly a century, Rolex has supported pioneering explorers pushing the boundaries of human endeavour to help them achieve countless historic feats. Over time, the company has moved from championing exploration for the sake of discovery to protecting the planet. Through the Perpetual Planet Initiative, Rolex stands alongside explorers, scientists and entrepreneurs, supporting their work to build a better future for all life on earth.

The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative was launched in 2019 and now has a portfolio of more than 30 partners. It also includes the Rolex Awards, which has supported exceptional individuals spearheading innovative projects for nearly 50 years. The expanding portfolio of partnerships and supported individuals are active in three main focus areas: Oceans; Landscapes; and Science, Health, and Technology.

Rolex supports a wide range of projects in the field of Ocean conservation such as: Mission Blue and Rolex Testimonee Sylvia Earle, dedicated to safeguarding the seas, and contributing to a global movement aiming to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030; conservation photographers Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen who, across more than 45 expeditions, have documented over 765 species and captured over seven million images; and Coral Gardeners, who are working to transplant resilient corals to reefs and have replanted more than 100,000 coral cuttings in twelve different restoration sites across French Polynesia, Fiji, and Thailand.

The Landscapes roster includes: a strengthened partnership with the National Geographic Society on understanding climate change; Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile, offspring organisations of Tompkins Conservation, which have inspired the protection of 5.6 million hectares of wild landscapes in South America; and Steve Boyes and the Great Spine of Africa series of expeditions, exploring the continent’s major river basins.

Rolex also supports partners in Science, Health, and Technology such as: 

Andrew Bastawrous, who has screened over 10 million people worldwide for treatable eye conditions; Felix Brooks-church, who is helping to nourish 10 million people a day in Tanzania and Kenya by fortifying staple foods; and Miranda Wang, who is revolutionising plastic recycling.

In addition, Rolex also supports organisations and initiatives fostering the next generation of explorers, scientists and conservationists, such as The Explorers Club and the CERN & Society Foundation.