Making Every Kernel Count

AT 23, JOHNSON IS NO STRANGER TO RUNNING A business. Propelled by a $150,000 40 Chances fellow- ship, awarded by the Howard G. Buffet Foundation, he has most recently founded Kernels for Peace (K4P), Liberia’s first fair trade palm kernel oil processing factory. K4P bridges a gap between an estimated $4 million of wasted palm kernels and a high demand for palm oil in the soap industry. “This initiative is representative of big picture development challenges in Liberia, where there are incred- ible resources and potential not being tapped,” Johnson says. “We can be our own employers and create value in the economy.”

K4P has earned Johnson recognition as the Business Startup Center’s 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year and has increased thousands of small farmers’ incomes by 25 to 35 percent. The organization creates jobs in areas where unemployment is high and pledges to reinvest 50 percent of profits into local communities after two years in operation.

Johnson’s former entrepreneurial ventures have in- cluded selling charcoal and T-shirts, and his unconvention- al path has taken him through a pre-Dartmouth position as public affairs intern for the president of Liberia, a job as co-host of a Liberian radio show and a drink with U2’s Bono (Johnson still has the Heineken bottle).

K4P takes his previous ventures to a new level. “The opportunity to help somebody earn a living is huge for me. It’s amazing to go to the factory site and see people working at something that was just an idea in my mind,” he says. “When people have better livelihoods, they have access to more choices and can choose paths that create better futures. I want to continue to use business to solve social problems in Liberia.”

“Any venture I undertake should align with my personal values,” says the entrepreneur.