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60% of youngsters in Kenya can’t rely on three meals a day. For kids in underserved communities throughout Africa, training stays the surest path to a safer future — and but starvation inhibits studying and optimum growth for a majority of the nation’s younger folks. It’s a lot tougher to study on an empty abdomen.

Learn the way Food4Education scaled as much as serving half one million college meals a day with Cisco’s assist.

Wawira Njiru, Founder and Govt Director of Food4Education, understood from the beginning that expertise was key to scaling up her operation dramatically sufficient to satisfy the each day dietary wants of lots of of hundreds of younger learners. Her group created a deeply tech-based answer to assist eradicate starvation and be certain that school-going kids have entry to a wholesome meal.

Food4Education’s revolutionary Tap2Eat system—a sensible fee answer—ensures that kids in Kenya obtain nutritious meals in school. By utilizing a wearable wristband linked to a cell pockets, kids can simply scan, eat, and concentrate on studying with out worrying about starvation.

Scaling up from 3,000 to over 500,000 meals served each day

In 2018, Cisco awarded the International Citizen Prize for Youth Management to Wawira to create and take a look at this expertise. On the time, the group was feeding 3,000  kids a day in Kenya. The funding enabled her group to scale from feeding 3,000 kids a day to 10,000 kids a day whereas additionally creating their Tap2Eat app and platform.

In 2022, we supplied a expertise grant of Webex, Meraki, and Cisco Umbrella applied sciences. Our expertise permits Food4Education to gather and use information analytics to boost their operations and choices, mitigate cyber threats, and securely join their operations, platform, and program choices. We additionally supplied a money grant to allow additional growth and scaling of their program to assist 100,000 kids a day.

As we speak, over 500,000 kids can Tap2Eat lunch in school each day utilizing the Tap2Eat cell app and wristband. The wristband makes use of Close to-Area Communication (NFC) expertise to allow seamless transactions, guaranteeing college students obtain meals with out the necessity for money or bodily contact.

Subtle analytics and expertise to optimize outcomes

The system additionally verifies meal supply to kids and sends real-time information on to Food4Education’s operational dashboards. This technique ensures correct monitoring of meal portions and uptake, enabling predictive analytics and simpler meal planning for the longer term.

Dad and mom, philanthropy, and authorities all contribute to the price of each day meals—maintaining this system regular, scalable, and sustainable.

The effectiveness of the answer is simple—and the youngsters are getting nourished in additional methods than one. As Wawira places it, “Each lunchtime, they’ll simply go faucet, so it offers mother and father a really excessive stage of visibility,” she mentioned, “however it additionally offers kids a way of possession and a way of pleasure.”

In colleges that serve meals by means of Tap2Eat, truancy is nearly zero. Tutorial efficiency is bettering, and attendance has elevated by as much as 30% in lots of areas.

Collaborating to realize exponential impression

Cisco’s partnership with Food4Education, the revolutionary use of expertise, and a dynamic enterprise technique based mostly on community-centric options to longstanding challenges have helped this system develop and thrive.

Food4Education is a social impression associate that embodies our shared values round primary vitamin and high quality training for everybody, whereas additionally demonstrating the facility of our incubator mannequin for nonprofits. Via our distinctive strategy, we scout for excellent concepts and dynamic founders, after which assist their early-stage, tech-enabled ideas by means of implementation, validation, and scaling.

For Cisco, funding nice concepts is barely the start. We convey the very best of Cisco—our expertise, our experience, and our innovation—to the connection. Setting our non-profit companions up for long run success and sustainability is all the time our aim. And it’s a aim shared with Wawira and Food4Education—as she places it: “I may write a guide about our fantastic relationship with Cisco!”

She explains, “Cisco has given us follow-on funding to enhance our use of expertise throughout the group, from utilizing Meraki throughout our operation, discovering methods to attach all our gadgets which can be utilized in Tap2Eat throughout an enormous community of faculties, to serving to us by way of our conferencing and our skill to speak and collaborate higher.”

See the story in movement

With Cisco’s assist, Food4Education is altering lots of of hundreds of lives on daily basis—and counting—fostering the subsequent technology of learners and getting ready them to take part totally within the fashionable economic system. To get the total story, watch our newly launched documentary-style video.

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The MMU complexity improve displays the challenges of managing packet buffering, queue scheduling and congestion management at these excessive bandwidths. Conventional approaches to packet switching grow to be more and more tough because the numbers of ports, queues and simultaneous flows develop exponentially.

The Tomahawk 6 addresses these challenges by means of a number of key architectural improvements. The chip helps configurations with as much as 1,024 100G SerDes lanes or higher-speed 200G SerDes choices, offering flexibility for various deployment eventualities. For AI clusters requiring prolonged attain, the 100G SerDes configuration permits longer passive copper interconnects, decreasing each energy consumption and whole value of possession in comparison with optical options. (Learn extra: Copper-to-optics expertise eyed for next-gen AI networking gear)

Unified scale-up and scale-out structure

Certainly one of Tomahawk 6’s most important technical achievements is its capability to deal with each scale-up and scale-out networking necessities inside a unified Ethernet framework. 

Scale-up networking refers to high-bandwidth, low-latency connections inside particular person AI coaching pods, usually supporting as much as 512 XPUs within the Tomahawk 6’s case. Scale-out networking connects these pods collectively into bigger clusters, with Tomahawk 6 supporting deployments exceeding 100,000 XPUs.

This unified method eliminates the necessity for separate networking applied sciences and protocols between scale-up and scale-out tiers, simplifying community operations. 

AI-optimized routing and congestion management

The Tomahawk 6 incorporates Cognitive Routing 2.0, an enhanced model of Broadcom’s adaptive routing expertise particularly designed for AI workloads. This method gives superior telemetry, dynamic congestion management, fast failure detection and packet trimming capabilities that allow international load balancing throughout the community material.

Safety’s Floor Is Shifting—Are You Prepared? 

Perimeters have dissolved. Assault surfaces are multiplying. And AI is pushing each boundary. As we journey this wave of transformation, safety is now not about bolting on controls—it’s about rethinking the structure altogether and the sorts of expertise with which to accomplice. 

Safety transformation is now not non-compulsory – it’s important. Quantum computing threatens to upend cryptography as we all know it. It’s not science fiction. It’s a really actual problem with very actual penalties for as we speak’s knowledge. 

At this important inflection level, operators are on the middle of the shift—tasked not simply with managing infrastructure, however with enabling a safe, adaptable digital basis. Safety innovation is accelerating-but adopting the most recent tech isn’t sufficient. To remain forward of quantum threats, safe distributed environments, and allow Zero Belief at scale, organizations want a accomplice with deep experience. That’s the place Cisco’s Safety Companies are available.

On this weblog, Viraj and I share the three applied sciences to maintain your eye on, and clarify how Cisco Buyer Expertise specialists may also help you: 

• Design and deploy crypto-agile, quantum-safe safety methods 






• Safe distributed networks and workloads with Hybrid Mesh Firewall 






• Allow Zero Belief entry for customers, units, and functions—all over the place 

Now let’s have a look at how this all ties collectively. 

Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall: Firewalling With out Borders 

The Business Shift:

Legacy firewalls weren’t constructed for hybrid, hyper-distributed networks. They’re inflexible, siloed, and blind to context.

The Repair:

Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall (HMF) blows up the previous mannequin—changing box-centric pondering with a distributed, identity-aware safety material. Enforcement factors are embedded all over the place (even switches), managed centrally through Cisco’s Safety Cloud Management.

Operator Actuality Test:

This adjustments every part. Operators now orchestrate safety throughout 1000’s of distributed enforcement factors. Coverage turns into contextual, identity-driven, and automatic. HMF gives the instruments to scale that complexity with readability and precision.

Backside Line:

HMF allows agility with out sacrificing management—good for securing fashionable, distributed networks at enterprise scale.

Cisco’s Common Zero Belief Community Entry (UZTNA): Zero Belief That Truly Works 

The Business Shift:

VPNs are outdated. IoT, AI, and distant work make conventional perimeter entry fashions irrelevant.

The Repair:

Cisco’s UZTNA reimagines safe entry—enabling each consumer, gadget, and factor to attach securely to any app, wherever. It unifies entry for contemporary and legacy methods alike with efficiency, coverage assurance, and full visibility.

Operator Actuality Test:

Utilizing Cisco’s Person Safety Suite and centralized Safety Cloud, operators can implement phased Common ZTNA methods—beginning with VPNaaS, scaling via app-specific Common ZTNA, and finally reaching common protection.

Backside Line:

Common ZTNA empowers operators to supply constant, least-privilege entry whereas streamlining administration and minimizing consumer friction.

Quantum-Secure Safety: Defending As we speak from Tomorrow 

The Business Shift:

Quantum computing threatens to render as we speak’s encryption out of date. And with the “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” (HNDL) mannequin, encrypted stolen knowledge is in danger now.

The Repair:

Quantum-safe safety isn’t non-compulsory—it’s pressing. Operators should lead the cost by constructing crypto agility, auditing encryption use, and getting ready to implement NIST-approved post-quantum algorithms.

In Might, Cisco introduced improvements within the quantum networking house, together with the revealing Cisco’s quantum community entanglement chip and the opening of Cisco quantum labs.

Operator Actuality Test:

Quantum poses a posh and evolving problem, and organizations should now discover a path ahead to map present encryption utilization, consider threat, and construct phased transition methods aligned with evolving requirements.

Extra particularly, operators ought to have the ability to: 

• Assess Their Most Essential Dangers: Establish the methods and knowledge which can be most weak to quantum assaults.






• Implement Crypto Agility: Be sure their methods can simply swap between completely different encryption algorithms, to allow them to shortly adapt to new threats.






• Discover Put up-Quantum Cryptography and associated quantum-safe options: Begin testing NIST-approved quantum-resistant algorithms and exploring hybrid crypto methods to remain forward of quantum threats.

Backside Line:

Quantum threats aren’t coming—they’re already right here. Operators should act now to guard high-value knowledge earlier than it’s too late. Early preparation is essential to defending high-value knowledge earlier than quantum disruption arrives.

Future-proof Safety with Cisco’s experience 

From quantum disruption to distributed firewalls and Zero Belief at scale, navigating the way forward for safety requires greater than the proper tech—it takes strategic experience. With 40 years of expertise and best-in-class specialists, Cisco’s experience is unmatched. Cisco Safety Companies helps you propose, construct, deploy and function next-gen safety architectures with readability, velocity, and resilience, and gives the experience that you must succeed. 

Be part of us at Cisco Reside to Study Extra

If you’re attending Cisco Reside subsequent week, don’t miss our Lightning Speak “Scale back complexity, acquire visibility, and enhance safety with Cisco companies for digital resilience” on Tuesday, June 10^th at 3:00 PM PT (WOSCX-1018). Discover how one can simplify operations, improve safety, and optimize community and software efficiency to fulfill fashionable calls for with digital resilience options equivalent to Splunk, ThousandEyes, and XDR for end-to-end visibility, proactive monitoring, and superior menace detection.

Different periods it’s possible you’ll wish to add to your schedule:

• An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Computing, and Networking (BRKETI-1401)






• Methods for a Quantum-Secure Safety Transition (BRKETI-1007)






• Navigating the Way forward for Cybersecurity: AI, Quantum-Resistant Cryptography and Zero Belief (ITLGEN-2055)

For those who’re eager about studying extra about Hybrid Mesh Firewall, Common ZTNA, Quantum Secure Safety, digital resilience and the way companies from Cisco Buyer Expertise can assist your journey, please go to us within the Digital Resilience and Future-proof Workplaces pods within the Cisco Showcase.

Lastly, in the event you’d like to fulfill with one in every of our Cisco safety companies subject-matter specialists (SMEs) whereas at Cisco Reside please attain out to us to schedule a gathering.

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For years, I watched Cisco Dwell periods with admiration — every one sparking the identical thought in my thoughts: “In the future, I wish to be up there, too.” I utilized to talk at Cisco Dwell yr after yr, refining concepts, evolving with expertise tendencies, and studying from every “thanks, however not this time” electronic mail, every one a small sting of disappointment, but in addition motivation to maintain pushing ahead.

In 2025, that dream lastly turned a actuality.

My session, targeted on chatbots and digital assistants in Cisco Contact Centres, was accepted for Cisco Dwell EMEA 2025 — and to my absolute astonishment, it bought out, with a ready record of attendees wanting to dive into the subject.

The Excellent Timing

Cisco Dwell isn’t simply an occasion — it’s a world stage the place expertise leaders and innovators share concepts that form the long run. For me, being accepted as a speaker wasn’t simply an achievement, it was the belief of a dream years within the making. To lastly stand on that stage felt like stepping right into a second I had envisioned for therefore lengthy.

The timing couldn’t have been extra good. Cisco had simply launched the Webex AI Agent, a complicated digital assistant designed to revolutionize buyer assist, and I had the unbelievable alternative to faucet into the joy over this launch with my speak, giving real-world context to a cutting-edge answer.

I shared how AI-powered digital assistants are reworking the best way we take into consideration buyer experiences — automating repetitive duties, enhancing decision instances, and letting people deal with complicated, high-value interactions. However what really amazed me was how the viewers related with the subject. Individuals didn’t simply fill the seats — they had been engaged, sparking conversations and asking questions that prolonged past the session itself.

Extra Than Only a Speak

The expertise didn’t finish when the session did. Being accepted as a Cisco Dwell speaker — after so many tries — has not solely been a profession milestone however a profession catalyst. It’s positioned me unexpectedly as a Topic Matter Knowledgeable in Contact Centre AI, opening doorways to conversations, collaborations, and new alternatives that weren’t even on my radar earlier than.

However most significantly, it jogged my memory that persistence pays off, particularly while you’re supported by an organization like Cisco.

Why Cisco Makes This Potential

Cisco isn’t only a tech firm — it’s a spot that believes within the individuals behind the concepts. I’m extremely grateful to work in an atmosphere that empowers staff to develop, converse up, and take the stage (actually). Being given the platform to share one thing I’m captivated with — and seeing that keenness resonate with others — is a second I’ll carry ahead with pleasure.

What’s distinctive about Cisco is the way it encourages us to dream large and gives the instruments to make these desires a actuality. To anybody with large profession desires: hold going. Your voice issues, your concepts matter, and at Cisco, they’ll all the time have a spot to shine.

Mine did — and it’s just the start.

Are you able to discover a place the place you’ll be able to shine? Uncover a profession alternative now!

Subscribe to the WeAreCisco Weblog.

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