Pelkins Ajanoh

Pelkins is a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of CassVita – a social enterprise that leverages technology to eradicate food insecurity and create prosperity for smallholder farmers in Africa. CassVita has invented a novel biotechnology for increasing the shelf-life of cassava from 3 days to 18 months, enabling cassava farmers to get real value for their crops. CassVita partners with thousands of farmers in West Africa and has been able to increase their earnings by as much as 400% by minimizing post-harvest losses. In addition, CassVita has built Africa’s largest fully automated cassava factory, processing cassava into flour and starch products that it sells to multinationals.

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Pelkins earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a joint MS/MBA degree from Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Harvard Business School, where he graduated with honors and was supported by the Soros Fellowship. 

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Pelkins is fluent in English and French, holds three patents, and was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

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