See The Winners of 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Awards

Global Citizen and the Waislitz Foundation have announced the winners of the 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Awards. The awards recognise individuals making extraordinary impacts in their communities in the fight against extreme poverty. The winners include Osei Boateng of Ghana, winner of the 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Grand Prize Award, Maryanne Gichanga of Kenya, winner of the Global Citizen Waislitz Disruptor Award, and Joshua Ichor of Nigeria, who receives the Global Citizen Waislitz People’s Choice Award.

Established in 2024, the Global Citizen Waislitz Award has been awarded annually with a total cash prize of USD 300,000, with each of the three prize winners receiving USD 100,000 to further advance their organisation’s work. Applicants are evaluated on individual merit across five key criteria: global citizenship, proof of concept, disruption, scalability and adaptability.

Meet this year’s winners!

Osei Boateng – Winner, 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Grand Prize Award

Osei Boateng is a healthcare entrepreneur from Ghana whose mission is driven by personal loss. After losing his grandmother and aunt to preventable conditions due to poor access to care, he committed his life to transforming healthcare for underserved communities. 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 delivered mental health education and resources to over 3,000 students. Osei envisions shifting healthcare from a reactive to a proactive approach. If awarded the Waislitz Global Citizen Award, he 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.

Maryanne Gichanga – Winner, 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Disruptor Award

Raised by a smallholder farmer in Kenya, Maryanne saw her mother struggle to feed us as pests, poor soils, and climate shocks wrecked our crops, forcing her brother Justin to drop out of school due to poverty. That pain shaped her purpose. Maryanne co-founded AgriTech Analytics to equip smallholder farmers, especially women and youth, with an AI-powered IoT sensor that conducts onsite soil health diagnostics in 4 minutes and also detects pests and diseases in real time. They now serve 9,930 farmers monthly, enabling up to 75% yield gains and 63% lower farm input costs. This award will help them onboard 15,000 smallholder farmers each month and reclaim 135,000 ha of degraded land to end poverty from the ground up.

Joshua Ichor – Winner, Global Citizen Waislitz People’s Choice Award

Ichor Joshua is a Nigerian hydrologist who nearly lost his life to a waterborne illness in 2010. That moment inspired his mission to end water poverty. In 2021, he founded Geotek Water Solutions, which builds solar-powered water kiosks and real-time water monitoring systems that detect contamination and water infrastructure failure. His organisation operates in conflict-affected and underserved communities across Nigeria and the Sahel. Since its launch, it has installed over 1,000 water infrastructure and monitoring systems, delivering clean water to more than 100,000 people. His work reduces water infrastructure downtime and restores water access in fragile communities. If selected for the Global Citizen Waislitz Award, Joshua will scale his work through Geotek to reach 200,000 people by 2026 and expand into five new regions in Africa.

“This year’s recipients, Osei Boateng, Maryanne Gichanga and Joshua Ichor exemplify the extraordinary impact and innovation we set out to recognise and support. I congratulate them and remain committed, along with the Waislitz Foundation, to supporting and growing these awards for many years to come,” said Alex Waislitz, Chairman and Founder of the Melbourne-based Waislitz Foundation and a recent recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).

Hugh Evans, Co-Founder and CEO, Global Citizen, said, “We’re proud to celebrate this year’s winners, three bold changemakers whose impact is immediate and lasting. Their work is a powerful reminder that meaningful progress most often comes from community-driven solutions.”

The Global Citizen Waislitz Awards have honoured 32 changemakers from around the world, including Bangladesh, Colombia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, the United States and more.

You can read more about the prize and previous winners here.