Elijah Amoo Addo is the Founder and Executive Director of Food for All Africa, West Africa’s first and largest food bank in Ghana that creates efficient and sustainable means of healthy nutrition for communities through advocacy, food recovery, and redistribution, in cooperation with credible, potential partners in all sectors. Elijah’s passion for feeding people was inspired by a man who recovered leftovers from hotels and restaurants to feed his colleagues.
A chef and food stylist by profession, Chef Elijah was awarded a Queen’s Young Leaders Award in 2017 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace for his contribution towards the reforming of Ghana’s food distribution system to reduce waste, overcome hunger, alleviate poverty and malnutrition through food banking.
He also received a Takeda Young Entrepreneurship Award from the Takeda Foundation in 2018. He had his secondary education at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School in Accra, Ghana and then completed a course in culinary studies at Sphinx Hospitality School and catering services in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds a certificate in entrepreneurship and management from YALI West Africa RLC-GIMPA and earned a Leading Change certificate from the University of Cambridge in 2017.
Chef Elijah was a panelist at the FAO Rome’s 2019 International Symposium on Agricultural Innovation for Family Farmers: Unlocking the potential of agricultural innovation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals’ and 2019 Eurafrican conference in Cascais, Portugal. He is a 2020 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and contributor on the Institut Montaigne blog.
He has appeared on CNN, DW, BBC and many TV / radio programs centered on food and society development. Chef Elijah has worked with corporate bodies such as Nestle, Finatrade, GADCO, Ghana Cocoa Board, GH1, Insel communication and many brands across the globe.