For three years, from 2020 to 2023, I ran a business that was a complete failure.

My first version of Agiza24 was a typical food delivery app. We tried to connect restaurants to customers. We bought motorcycles. We burned through our life savings. We were solving a problem—’how to get food faster’—that a dozen other companies were already solving. The stress was immense. I gained 33 kilos. The business was dying.

But while my business was dying, my father was battling diabetes and high blood pressure. At home, we were lost, unsure of what to cook for him. It became a nightmare whenever he was hospitalized. While juggling doctor’s appointments and medications, we were also tormented by the question of what he should eat and who could possibly prepare it for him. It was stress layered on top of stress.

We all know the saying: medicine manages the disease, but food has the power to control it. Doctors tell you to control your sugar and watch your blood pressure, but they rarely tell you how.

They can list what to eat and what to avoid, but they can’t teach you how to prepare it. It’s not their fault; they are experts in human anatomy, not culinary science. And since we don’t know either, we remain trapped in a helpless dilemma.

For my father, being forbidden from eating his usual foods caused him to waste away. He lost so much weight that a blood pressure cuff could no longer grip his arm. This was a man who had once weighed over 100 kilograms.

When he was in the hospital, battling for his life, our family’s world became a frantic, daily search for a single, safe meal. A meal that wouldn’t harm him. A meal that could give him strength.

We begged restaurants. We scrolled endlessly through delivery apps. We were met with confusion and shrugs. The system simply wasn’t designed for someone with my father’s needs. There were no options.

There was no help. There was only helplessness. And, to cut story short…

On December 26, 2024, my father passed away.

The pain was immense, not just from his absence, but from the timing of it all. Like many African fathers of his generation, he had always been distant. But in his final years, we were building a connection we never had during our childhoods. We were just beginning to experience a friendship with our dad.

In that moment of profound loss, I had a devastatingly clear revelation: for three years, I had been completely and utterly wrong. The real problem wasn’t a lack of convenience. The real problem was a lack of control, a lack of precision, a lack of trust.

The real problem was the helplessness my family felt. The helplessness felt by millions of Tanzanians every single day.

His story is not unique. The truth is devastating.

It is the story of 2.9 million families across Tanzania facing this same challenge—a number that has increased by 250% since 2011. Meanwhile, 53% of Tanzanians with diabetes are undiagnosed. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) projects a 142% rise in diabetes cases in Africa by 2050, and 7.6 million of those will be Tanzanians.

In Tanzania, we lose 68 people every single day to diabetes alone. That’s nearly 25,000 lives a year.

These aren’t just statistics to me. This is my life. Since 2020, I have lost my aunt, two uncles, my stepfather, and my own father, all to complications from high blood pressure and diabetes. Even as I write this, two more people in my family are living with diabetes.

The worst part? There is no platform, no service, no readily available solution to this crisis.

What about restaurants? They are built like factories: input recipes, output plates of food. They aren’t designed to cater to your health goals. And food delivery apps? I know that world inside and out from my previous company, Agiza24. The problem we solved was convenience, not health. They don’t care what you eat.

The pain my family and I endured is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It was only after my father’s death that I realized we weren’t solving the problem that truly mattered: saving lives.

So, in January 2025, I dedicated myself to finding a real solution. With my co-founder, Dr. Joseph, a medical doctor, we dropped Agiza24 and began rebuilding Agiza —a platform for “food as medicine.” 

My father’s struggle became my mission. His memory became the unshakable foundation of the new Agiza.

We are not building this because we saw a Africa’s $2.8 billion diabetes market opportunity. We are building this because we lived the painful consequences of it not existing. And we made a promise that no other family should have to feel that same helplessness again.