Pelkins Mbacham Ajanoh

About Pelkins Mbacham Ajanoh

Pelkins Mbacham Ajanoh was born in Limbe, Cameroon, where he spent his formative years before excelling in high school, graduating as the top student nationally in the high-school-leaving examination.

At 19, Pelkins immigrated to the United States to reunite with his mother, who had relocated there a few years earlier. He earned admission to MIT, where he studied mechanical engineering. During his time at MIT, Pelkins discovered a passion for entrepreneurship as a means of creating economic opportunities in vulnerable communities. This drive led him to found CassVita, an agri-tech company in Cameroon that transforms cassava—a highly perishable tropical crop—into shelf-stable flour.

To deepen his technical expertise and develop the business skills necessary to scale CassVita, Pelkins pursued and graduated with honors from the MS/MBA program jointly offered by Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Harvard Business School.

Today, CassVita supports a network of over 2,000 farmers in Cameroon and supplies its products to multinational companies like Nestlé.

Fluent in French, Pelkins holds three patents and was recently recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.