Podcast
Why Menstrual Health Means the Power to Shape Your Own Future, with Beatrice and Megan of ZanaAfrica
2026-09-24 · By Megan Mukuria, Founder and CEO, ZanaAfrica, and Beatrice Wanjiku Jane, Kenya Executive Director, ZanaAfrica
Megan Mukuria and Beatrice Wanjiku Jane of ZanaAfrica explore why menstrual health is about more than access to sanitary products. They discuss education, reproductive health, gender equality, social enterprise, locally led leadership and innovative funding—and how trusted information, community participation and partnerships can give adolescents greater agency to shape their futures.
Menstrual health is often treated as a question of access to sanitary pads. But for ZanaAfrica, it is also about education, health, gender equality, environmental sustainability and the power to shape your own future.
Social Impact Pioneers, Megan Mukuria, founder and CEO ZanaAfrica and the organisation’s Kenya Executive Director, Beatrice Wanjiku Jane explain how a campaign launched in 2006 developed into an ambitious social enterprise and nonprofit working to improve menstrual health and reproductive health education in Kenya.
Megan recalls the conversations with young people that convinced her products alone would not be enough. She charts ZanaAfrica’s evolution through policy advocacy, sanitary pad innovation, consumer brands and a rights-based curriculum for girls and boys. She also introduces the idea of a “Fast Moving Educational Good”: an everyday product that can carry trusted information into homes and communities.
Beatrice describes what she has brought to ZanaAfrica after nearly two decades in international development. Drawing on her experience in child protection, public health, gender-transformative programming and community participation, she makes the case for solutions shaped by those closest to the challenges. That means involving not only girls, but boys, parents, teachers, faith leaders and wider communities.
The discussion also examines a persistent problem in social impact funding. Hybrid organisations such as ZanaAfrica can struggle to fit conventional categories: too commercial for some grant-makers, yet unable to offer the returns sought by venture capital. Megan and Beatrice argue for impact-based funding, longer-term partnerships and measurement frameworks co-designed by funders, grantees and communities. Megan reflects on ZanaAfrica’s collaboration with the Gates Foundation and what relationship-based funding can make possible.
There is also a candid exploration of leadership: adapting to constant change, hiring people with different strengths, sharing power and combining a founder’s long-term vision with locally rooted operational leadership.
As ZanaAfrica works with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, expands its Nia Healthlink platform and looks towards reaching millions more people, Megan and Beatrice consider what it will take to move proven ideas from research into implementation and scale.
It asks how governments, philanthropists, businesses and communities can work together to give adolescents reliable knowledge, practical support and greater agency, while building models capable of lasting change across Africa.
This is a conversation about period poverty, social entrepreneurship and systems change—and why listening, trust and partnership may be as important as the product itself.
Links:
Zana Africa: zanaafrica.org/
Megan Mukuria: www.linkedin.com/in/mwmukuria/
Beatrice Wanjiku Jane: www.linkedin.com/in/beatrice-jane-3338561b6/
And if you liked this, take a listen to:
TURNING BUSINESS INTO A FORCE FOR WATER AND HYGIENE WITH PHILIPP KÜST: https://businessfightspoverty.org/business-water-sanitation-philipp-kust-reckitt/