The Samuele Tini Show - where business, innovation, and sustainability converge

Own the Road: Lessons for African Entrepreneurs

When Tonderai Njowera's father came home and asked, "Did you know you can own a highway?" it changed everything. That one question sent a young boy in Zimbabwe on a journey from civil engineering to investment management to venture building in Cape Town.
In this episode, Tonderai breaks down why Africa's biggest challenge isn't lack of capital or resources but a leadership gap. He argues that protectionism is the wrong response to global competition: African entrepreneurs need to think globally, not retreat locally. Using a powerful Formula One analogy, he explains how underdogs win by reading the conditions and capitalizing on disruption.
Key insights from the conversation:
Infrastructure is more than roads and bridges. It includes cultural and educational foundations that shape innovation capacity.
The current global economic reset is an equalizer. Smart entrepreneurs can use it as a launchpad.
Long-term thinking must coexist with short-term execution. The challenge is mixing the dose right.
Family offices, DFIs, venture capital and grants each play a distinct role in the long-term investment picture.
Tonderai Njowera is an entrepreneur, systems architect, and investor based in Cape Town, with roots in Zimbabwe's engineering and infrastructure sectors.
Listen now and rethink what "competitive advantage" means for African founders.
 

Stop Disrupting, Start Building with Costas Papaikonomou

What if the most profitable climate investments aren't sexy at all? Costas Papayconomou, co-founder of Una Terra, spent a career in innovation consulting (including building and selling an agency to Accenture) before turning to circular economy investing. His thesis is simple and counterintuitive: don't disrupt old industries, clean them up. In this episode, Costas walks us through investments that sound boring but are brilliant: a cellulose-based white colorant replacing toxic titanium dioxide (with IKEA as lead investor), smarter food packaging that cuts energy use while making meals taste better, and paper pulp innovations. He shares why founding teams should be obsessed with customers, not investors. Why they literally added "does this violate the laws of physics?" to their deal screening. And why the talent war, not regulation, will ultimately force every industry to go green. His closing advice: look for the smallest problem that affects the most people. 

Africa Doesn't Need the West. The West Needs Africa

What if the most powerful innovations don't come from billion-dollar labs, but from people who have almost nothing?
Navi Radjou left Silicon Valley after 13 years because he realized most innovation there serves the top 1%. Now based in Bangalore, he's spent two decades proving that resource scarcity breeds the most radical creativity. In this episode, Navi breaks down why Africa is set to become the world's innovation lab, not its charity case. He introduces the "frugal economy" model built on three pillars: cooperation over competition, decentralized production over mega-factories, and regeneration over extraction. From Hello Tractor (the Uber for small farmers) to Levi's sharing proprietary tech with rivals, Navi delivers a blueprint for a post-capitalist economy rooted in Ubuntu philosophy. His parting shot: the world's biggest crisis is a crisis of imagination, and Africa holds the answer. Listen now on samueletini.com

Women Don’t Own Their Time: The Hidden Constraint on Entrepreneurship

In this episode, I’m joined by Alisa Sydow (Professor of Entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School) to unpack what women founders are really navigating in Africa’s entrepreneurship ecosystem beyond the usual “barriers list.”
We discuss:
Why purpose is powerful—but can also limit growth if it makes founders neglect commercial fundamentals.
The overlooked role of founder identity (and why some women subconsciously place business last).
The gap between policy and lived reality in finance access (including stories shared by founders in 2025).
A practical, grounded view of product uniqueness, market fit, and why the local market is often underestimated.
Why “trendy” international calls for proposals can distort markets and push founders toward the wrong models.
 
If you mentor founders, invest, design entrepreneurship programs—or you are building yourself this is an episode to bookmark.

The Business Case for Syntropic Farming: 2.5 Hectares, 115k in Revenue (Forest Foods Kenya)

Syntropy isn’t about the tropics—it’s about the physics of life. In this episode, Samuele sits down with Sven Verwiel, CEO & Co‑Founder of Forest Foods (Kenya), to unpack syntropic agroforestry: a regenerative farming approach designed to compound productivity over time through stratification (vertical layers) and succession (time).
We go from field reality to unit economics: what it takes to regenerate degraded soils, why syntropic systems can reach ~200–230% land‑use efficiency, and how Forest Foods is proving a commercial model with outdoor production, zero chemicals, and strong market demand for premium quality.
We also discuss livestock integration (pasture‑raised chickens), the hardest founder challenges (land access, capital, logistics, cold chain), and why regenerative agriculture must become a career path that attracts the next generation.
Key topics: syntropy vs entropy, soil regeneration, agroforestry design, profitability, go‑to‑market, scaling regenerative food systems in Africa

The 80/20 of Dairy Profitability: Nutrition + Reproduction

In this episode, Samuele speaks with Apollo Gabazira—Country Director at CARE International (Uganda) and an award‑winning regenerative farmer—about what it takes to make farming profitable, scalable, and youth‑attractive in East Africa.
Apollo shares the Asaba Farm System and its “quad model”:
dairy as a foundation
agronomy and circularity (turning waste into value)
skilling youth through hands‑on learning
community extension through local one‑stop hubs (“Farmers Point Outlets”)
We also unpack Apollo’s most actionable insight: the 80/20 rule in dairy—focus on nutrition and reproduction to shift the majority of outcomes, from milk yield to economics.
Finally, we zoom out to the bigger levers: what must change in policy, access to capital, and public‑private collaboration so regenerative and climate‑smart agriculture can become the norm—not the exception.
Key topics: profitable regenerative farming, extension models, youth skilling, policy, capital, SME partnerships.

Can we really put a price on nature? This nature‑finance expert says we must.

When you clear a forest to plant maize and make charcoal, you’ve already put a price on nature—the future cash flows from the maize and the wood. The problem is that price is far too low.
In this episode of The Samuele Tini Show, I speak with Josep Oriol, Managing Partner at Okavango Capital Partners and a leading nature‑finance expert working across Sub‑Saharan Africa.
A Catalan who fell in love with African wildlife as a child, Josep trained as a lawyer, moved into venture capital and banking, then finally to Southern Africa to build a different kind of private equity firm—one that backs nature‑positive businesses whose performance depends on how they treat forests, soil and water. Today, Okavango‑backed companies help protect around 8–9 million hectares of land (about twice the size of Switzerland) and create income streams for hundreds of thousands of rural people.
We dive into:
The mispricing of nature: every land‑use decision—from forest to maize field—is already a price signal, and why that’s dangerous if we ignore the true value of ecosystems.
Forest carbon in practice: the story of BioCarbon Partners, REDD+ projects, and rural families living on ~$20/month in cash who now earn income by keeping forests standing.
Carbon market backlash: Josep’s response to critics of carbon credits, and why, compared to agriculture, mining or logging, high‑integrity projects are often far more transparent and generous to local communities.
Three big opportunity themes:
smarter agriculture and agroforestry to boost yields and cut waste,
tech for soil, post‑harvest, insurance and finance,
monetising ecosystem services via tourism, carbon, biodiversity and water credits—and why fuelwood is still the elephant in the room.
Why classic 5‑year 10x PE funds don’t fit Africa: and how Okavango uses longer horizons and flexible instruments (loans with equity options, convertibles, prefs) instead of only straight equity.
We close with Josep’s advice for entrepreneurs in nature‑based sectors—live with existential threat, love cash flow and margins, and assume everything will take twice the time and three times the money—and his vision of Africa’s future looking more like South Korea or Malaysia than Europe, if we get the nature piece right.
If you care about where climate capital should actually go, this is a sharp, grounded conversation from inside the deal flow.
 

The Most Underrated Climate Tool You’ve Never Heard Of: Biochar Explained

We talk a lot about tree planting, but far less about what happens to all the agricultural and organic waste we burn or dump. That’s where biochar comes in.
In this episode of The Samuele Tini Show, I’m joined by Luisa Marin, Executive Director of the International Biochar Initiative (IBI). After 25+ years in conservation with organisations like Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, Luisa moved into carbon project development—and discovered biochar: a carbon‑rich “black sponge” made by pyrolysing crop residues, prunings, manure and other organic waste instead of letting them rot or burn.
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Done well, biochar can:
Lock away carbon in soils and materials for hundreds to thousands of years
Regenerate soils, boosting water retention, porosity and microbial life
Cut fertiliser and irrigation needs for farmers
Create new revenue streams through products and carbon credits—especially in the Global South
Luisa explains how research suggests biochar could remove up to 6% of global annual emissions—roughly like switching off 800 coal plants for a year—and why just 1 gram of biochar can have the surface area of two tennis courts. She also talks frankly about “good biochar” vs “bad biochar”, the importance of standards and lab tests, and the most common mistake she sees: projects chasing carbon money without proper technical and financial feasibility or patient capital.
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We also hear real examples from Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Latin America, where farmers and communities are already turning waste into value using both industrial and artisanal kilns—with support from NGOs, digital MRV tools and local governments.
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If you care about climate action, soil health and future markets in the Global South, this episode is a clear, grounded introduction to one of the most powerful—and underrated—tools on the table.

Will Your Business Survive When Customers Start Asking for Proof?

In most emerging markets, “sustainability” has been designed for big exporters, banks and multinationals. Everyone else – the micro, small and medium businesses that actually employ people and move the economy – is basically left out but more and more customers are asking for proofs.
In this episode, Luke Hayman, Executive Director of Sustainable Kenya, explains how his team is trying to flip that script with an Africa-first sustainability infrastructure.
Instead of 40-page ESG questionnaires in foreign jargon, they use:
Short, contextualised assessments in English and Swahili
AI to analyse answers, documents and even voice notes
Clear scorecards plus realistic next steps, not just a vanity score
A growing public directory of businesses that can actually prove what they claim
We talk about why sustainability is fast becoming a language of credibility in Kenya: if you can show evidence, you unlock customers, finance and partnerships; if you cannot, you are increasingly invisible. Luke also shares what Kenyan consumers are really saying about “sustainable products”, why price and trust still block action, and how shared data could stop every investor inventing their own ESG scoring system.
If you are tired of ESG theatre and want to see what practical, bottom-up sustainability looks like, this conversation is for you.

Contested Conservation: What People Really Think | Special Episode 7 ORC 2025

Special Episode — Recorded live at the Oppenheimer Research Conference 2025.The global conservation debate is loud — but often poorly informed about what people who live with wildlife actually think. In this revealing episode, researchers Dr. Darragh Hare (Oxford) and Dr. Lovemore Sibanda share evidence from multi-country surveys exploring views on militarised conservation, ranger powers, trophy hunting, wildlife crime penalties, and protected area governance.
What they found is both nuanced and surprising:• Communities living near wildlife aren’t always opposed to ranger enforcement• Support varies dramatically depending on governance models• Magadi (Kenya) stands out as a case where community scouts foster high acceptance• Assumptions from global media often misrepresent local realities• Sustainable conservation must factor in perspectives of those most affected
A crucial episode for anyone designing policy, funding projects or shaping the future of African conservation.