I build things that pay their way, and clean up after themselves.
Engineer by training, founder by accident, and an incurable optimist about what Africa can build for itself. Here's the short version, the long version, and the parts the bios usually leave out.
Written to be borrowed.
Putting together a program, a panel intro, or a press profile? Lift any of this verbatim. It's accurate and up to date.
Joseph Nguthiru is a Kenyan climate-tech engineer, founder, and the 2025 UN Young Champion of the Earth. He is the founder of HyaPak, which converts invasive water hyacinth into biodegradable packaging, and co-founder of M-Situ, a solar-powered AI sensor network for real-time forest protection.
A civil and environmental engineer by training, Joseph began HyaPak as his final-year university project after a field trip on Lake Naivasha left his boat trapped for five hours in the same weed that strangles the lake's fishing economy. He incorporated it in 2022, and the company now turns that weed into biodegradable seedling bags, courier packaging and cold-chain linings that replace fossil-fuel plastic, while helping clear the freshwater ecosystems the hyacinth chokes.
He also co-founded AfroClimate, a US 501(c)(3) that has backed more than 40 African climate ventures, and serves as a Contact Point in the YOUNGO Science Working Group, the UNFCCC's official youth constituency, representing young scientists in international climate negotiations. He co-founded The Keeling Society to make climate science legible to young people. His work has been recognized by UNEP, the Obama Foundation, One Young World, the Prototypes for Humanity Award at COP28, and 40 Under 40 Africa, and covered by CNN, BBC, DW, Al Jazeera, AP, Nature, The Independent and Jeune Afrique, among others.
Before climate-tech became the whole job, Joseph's path ran through engineering, media and energy, including work with L’Oréal, Nation Media Group and China Energy. That experience now feeds the ventures and the teams behind them.
Joseph is based in Nairobi, Kenya. He speaks on climate innovation, circular economy, and building deep-tech ventures from the African continent.
The parts the bio leaves out.
I didn't grow up planning to start a company. I wanted to be an engineer who builds things that stand up: bridges, water systems, the unglamorous infrastructure a country actually runs on. Then a weed got in the way, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
What I love about this work is that it's stubbornly practical. We're not waiting for someone overseas to send a solution. The hyacinth is here. The forests are here. The talent is here. The job is to put what we already have to work, and to make the economics add up so it lasts after the grant runs out.
I'm warm with people and impatient with problems. I don't build alone. Every one of these ventures runs on a team I trust, and I'd rather show you a sample you can hold than a slide you have to believe.
Away from the lab: I once wanted to be a DJ. Truth be told, I turned out a far better engineer than I ever was a selector, but those nights behind the decks stuck with me, and I still think a good set and a good pitch are the same skill: read the room, build the energy, and know exactly when to drop the thing everyone came for. (I also once won a Chinese-language singing prize. Ask me after the second coffee.)
I'm a born-again Christian and serve on the media team at my church, I'll happily argue that wrestling is theatre for engineers, I'm a long-suffering Chelsea fan, and I take my coffee seriously enough that "let's grab a coffee" is never just a figure of speech.
If you've heard me on a panel, you know I talk fast when I'm excited. Most days, I'm excited.
The rooms that shaped the work.
I keep building things that solve more than one problem at once.
HyaPak gets the headlines, but the same instinct shows up everywhere: take what's already there, and put it to work for the people nearby.
A solar dryer for pyrethrum
A low-cost solar dryer I designed at university with Kentagra and the Tin Roof Foundation, helping Kenyan pyrethrum farmers cure their crop faster and earn more, and reviving a cash crop that had been fading for years.
Adopt a River
A community clean-up effort that has pulled tonnes of waste out of Kenyan rivers, the same watersheds that feed the lakes where HyaPak’s story began.
A process worth protecting
The method behind turning water hyacinth into usable material is proprietary, kept in-house so the work can scale responsibly.