The year 2025 marks the 11th anniversary of the Global Citizen Waislitz Awards, with each year boasting formidable talents committed to making a lasting impact on society. We are beyond excited to announce this year’s winners. These leaders are being recognized for their deep commitment to ending extreme poverty, from championing access to healthcare for those who need it most, and empowering smallholder farmers with innovative agriculture technology, to working towards the end of water poverty.
This year’s Global Citizen Waislitz Awards is honoring three changemakers with $100,000 cash prizes each, totalling $300,000. The three winners will also receive networking support, which will help them accelerate and scale the impact that they are already having through their organizations.
Now, let’s meet this year’s winners!
Grand Prize Winner: Osei Boateng, Ghana
2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Award, Global Citizen Prize Award winner, Osei Boateng, Healthcare Entrepreneur and founder of OKB Hope Foundation. Image: Supplied
Osei Boateng, a healthcare entrepreneur and founder and executive director of OKB Hope Foundation, has been awarded the Grand Prize Award for his exceptional work on transforming access to healthcare in Ghana.
Boateng’s mission is driven by personal loss. After losing his grandmother and aunt to poor access to care — a preventable tragedy that shouldn’t result in death. He dedicated his life’s work to improving healthcare quality and access for underserved communities in Ghana.
He founded the OKB Hope Foundation to provide primary and preventive care through health vans equipped with medical supplies and staffed by experienced healthcare providers. Under his leadership, the foundation has served over 10,000 individuals in 80 rural communities, and has delivered mental health education and resources to over 3,000 students. Boateng envisions shifting healthcare from a reactive to a proactive approach, which, in a post-pandemic world, is more essential than ever. With the support of the Global Citizen Waislitz Award, Boateng plans to expand the mobile fleet, reach more remote areas, and scale a proven, life-saving model that ensures no one is left behind due to geography.
Disruptor Winner: Maryanne Gichanga, Kenya
2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Award ‘Disruptor winner’, Maryanne Gichanga, Co-founder and CEO of AgriTech Analytics Ltd. Image: Supplied
Maryanne Gichanga, Co-founder and CEO of AgriTech Analytics, has earned the Disruptor Award for her inventive work in agriculture technology.
Raised by a smallholder farmer in Kenya, Gichanga witnessed her mother’s struggle to feed her siblings and family, as pests, poor soil, and climate shocks wrecked her family’s crops — forcing her brother Justin to drop out of school due to the resulting poverty.
That pain from her childhood shaped Gichanga’s purpose, and in 2018, she co-founded AgriTech Analytics to equip smallholder farmers, especially women and young people, with an AI-powered IoT (which is short for Internet of Things) sensor that conducts on-site soil health diagnostics in just four minutes and detects pests and crop disease in real time. Today, the company assists almost 10,000 farmers every month with their tech services, leading to harvest gains of up to 75% and lowering costs by 63%. With the support of the Global Citizen Waislitz Award, Gichanga’s organization will be able to onboard 15,000 smallholder farmers each month and reclaim 135,000 hectares of degraded land to end poverty from the ground up.
People’s Choice Winner: Joshua Ichor, Nigeria
2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Award ‘People’s Choice' winner, Joshua Ichor, Founder and CEO of Geotek Water Solutions Ltd. Image: Supplied
Joshua Ichor, a hydrologist, founder and CEO of Geotek Water Solutions has been awarded the People's Choice Award for his remarkable efforts to end water poverty in Nigeria.
In 2010, Ichor nearly lost his life to a waterborne illness. That life-altering moment inspired his mission to tackle water poverty head-on. In 2021, he founded Geotek Water Solutions, a social enterprise that builds solar-powered water kiosks and real-time water monitoring systems that detect contamination and water infrastructure failure. His organization operates in conflict-affected and underserved communities across Nigeria and the Sahel.
Since its launch, the start-up has installed over 1,000 water infrastructure and monitoring systems, delivering clean water to more than 100,000 people. Ichor’s work reduces water infrastructure downtime and restores water access to fragile communities. With the Global Citizen Waislitz People’s Choice Award, Ichor aims to scale his work through Geotek to reach 200,000 people by 2026 and expand into five new regions across the continent of Africa.
More About the Awards
The annual awards are presented by the Waislitz Foundation and Global Citizen in an effort to support the brilliant work of social entrepreneurs and innovators addressing the root causes of extreme poverty. The Waislitz Foundation exists to create a positive social impact locally and globally through innovative projects that empower individuals to meet their full potential and make a measurable difference to the world.
“Ending extreme poverty is not a choice, it's an obligation. My hope is that it will inspire many thousands of people around the world to do what they can to improve the living standards of those in dire need," said Chairman and Founder of the Melbourne-based Waislitz Foundation, Alex Waislitz.