Oscar Ekponimo a young, skilled, passionate and talented software engineer living in Abuja is working to ensure others do not suffer as he did. At the age of 11, Ekponimo was so hungry that he would stare at the kitchen cupboards in their home in Calabar, Nigeria, wishing they would magically fill up with food. His father had stopped working after a partial stroke, and his mother earned so little as a nurse that he and his siblings ate just one substantial meal every two days. “My mom used to remind us that the hunger was not forever,” he said. “That always kept me going.”
It has driven him to enhance distribution of food waste to orphanages and needy families in a much more positive and noble way by developing a platform called Chowberry, which connects grocery stores and supermarkets with NGOs and charities to put wasted or leftover food to use instead of being thrown down the trash bin.
As packaged food items near the end of their shelf life, the app initiates discounts that grow larger the longer the products remain unsold. Local aid groups and other selected nonprofits are alerted about these discounts and also when supermarkets are giving food away for free using the digital platform.
Last year his team of four completed a three-month pilot involving 20 retailers and fed around 150 orphans and vulnerable children. “Our system helped (orphanages) cut down on their spending by more than 70%,” he says. Although every small retailer Ekponimo has approached in Nigeria has embraced Chowberry, he says, larger companies have been slow to adopt the technology, mainly because of red tape. “That’s been his biggest challenge.”
Despite such problems, Ekponimo can’t imagine a different life for himself. “I had several job offers from big (technology) companies over the past few years,” he says. “But Chowberry is what I am passionate about and find fulfilling. I want to see it grow and continue to benefit people’s lives.”
The world needs more noble hearts such as this one for Oscar Ekponimo and he definitely is in the class of next generation world leaders.
