CultivAid founder Tomer Malchi wins the 2026 Charles Bronfman Prize

Dr. Tomer Malchi, co-founder and chief executive of the Israeli nonprofit CultivAid, was named the 2026 laureate of the Charles Bronfman Prize on 4 May 2026. The $100,000 award goes each year to a humanitarian under 50 whose work is informed by Jewish values and benefits people around the world. Malchi said most of the money would go back into CultivAid's operations.

CultivAid grew out of an agricultural development programme that Malchi led through Engineers Without Borders Israel, and was launched as a separate organisation in 2016 with Ben Cohen and Yair Keinan. It works with smallholder farmers in East Africa on seedlings, nurseries, irrigation and water use. Its centrepiece is a network of Agricultural Innovation and Technology Centres in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya, where local staff and farmers receive hands-on training and access to new methods, and it is expanding into Zambia. About 100 people work for the organisation in the field, most of them African.

Malchi argues that aid and long-term development have been wrongly treated as one field. Rather than handing out free seeds or tools, CultivAid sells seedlings and links farmers to buyers, so that production is tied to real markets. In Tanzania, for instance, it helps farmers grow grapes for local wineries. The organisation reports that farmers' yields can rise more than fivefold and that each $100,000 invested generates at least $500,000 in local income. Between a fifth and a third of its yearly budget now comes from its own revenue.

Malchi, 44, was born in Israel and grew up near New York City. He studied at Cornell University and earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, returning to Israel at 26 to work on agriculture, water and nutrition. The prize committee said he embodied everything the award stands for.