Manka Angwafo

Manka Angwafo is an award-winning social entrepreneur, a recognized and published development policy expert with a decade of experience working in rural communities. In her current venture, Grassland, she improves farmer productivity by increasing access to finance for rural African farmers and connecting them to high value buyers across various market segments. Grassland’s solution has doubled farmers' yields per hectare, while reducing their costs of production by 60 percent and tripling their incomes.

Prior to this, Ms. Angwafo spent eight years at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. supporting multiple teams including the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa, at the World Bank in Washington D.C. In this capacity, she conducted data analysis for policy briefs; as well as operational support for country offices in the field. She co-authored a flagship report, as well as multiple volumes of “Africa’s Pulse,” the bi-annual regional publication on macroeconomic trends in Sub-Saharan Africa. She received much of her operational field experience in South Sudan, where she spent a year supporting the Social Protection and Health teams. During this time, she designed and conducted baseline surveys for pilot results based financing for health programs in Jonglei and Upper Nile regions. These surveys were instrumental in determining the baseline health data in both states prior to South Sudan’s independence.

Ms. Angwafo has almost a decade's experience in entrepreneurship in Africa. Her Educational background includes a B.A in Economics & International Relations from Tufts University in Massachusetts, a Master’s degree in Business from ESCP-EAP in Paris and an Executive degree in Social Entrepreneurship from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. She is fluent in English and French. When she’s not working on her business, she enjoys problem solving, traveling, playing tennis and hiking.

About Grassland Cameroon, LTD

Grassland Cameroon (Grassland) is a privately held social enterprise located in Yaounde, Cameroon. Grassland is a food storage, processing, and distribution company that sources products from smallholder farmers, whom it supports during the season with input loans and training, so that they can be more productive. Grassland transforms its farmers' grain into standardized, consumer products that are sold worldwide. Its flagship product, BooWee is a locally sourced, fortified, corn-based breakfast cereal that can be cooked in under 3 mins in boiling water.