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

Reina-Flor Okori competed in four Olympic Games. Three for France, then one final Games for Equatorial Guinea, where she carried the flag her parents fled under. In this episode, the hurdler turned leadership coach explains why the "win at all costs" mindset that took her to the top nearly destroyed her, and what she built instead. We explore her three levels of leadership: survival mode, the hype...

What if Africa's biggest climate problem is the climate agenda itself? Soha Benchekroun argues that for Africa, sustainability and industrialisation are the same project, and that thirty years of climate negotiations have delivered almost nothing for the continent. A climate and development policy researcher, she builds the case from inside the rooms she critiques. We get into why adaptation keeps...

Six years ago, Christopher Marquis wrote that the B Corp movement was remaking capitalism. Today the movement is twenty years old, ten thousand companies strong, and in the middle of a reckoning. Marquis, Sinyi Professor at Cambridge Judge Business School and author of Better Business, Mao and Markets and The Profiteers, joins the show to talk straight. Why the Dr. Bronner's exit and the Nespresso...

In 1919, a group of business people gave themselves a strange name: the Merchants of Peace. Their bet was that trading nations fight less. They had just watched Central Europe destroy itself, and they believed commerce could be a brake on war. A century later, with the Strait of Hormuz blocked and tariffs rising, that idea is being tested in real time. Sebastian Ferrari leads strategic initiatives...

For years, men gathered in Kenyan trading centres, read the Nairobi Coffee Exchange price in the newspaper, did some quick math, and concluded their cooperative leaders had stolen their money. Most of the time, nobody had stolen anything. They were using the wrong number. Henry Kinyua, the Coffee Man of Kenya, is a trained agronomist and value chain specialist who has worked the Kenyan coffee sect...

What if everything you do to "live green" makes almost no difference, and quietly makes things worse? Michael Maniates, author of The Living Green Myth and co-author of Confronting Consumption and Consumption Corridors, argues that buying eco products and living lean is a comforting story that commodifies our anxieties and parks conscientious people in dead ends of despair. He explains why technol...

Up to 50% of Kenya's fruits and vegetables never reach a plate. Not because farmers can't grow. Because nobody can reliably move, sort, price and pay. Claire van Enk is the founder and CEO of Farm to Feed, a Nairobi-based agritech platform that today connects 6,000 smallholder farmers with hotels, restaurants, schools and food processors across Kenya through bespoke logistics, traceability and a 2...

What if the obsession driving the global economy is not a strategy, but a religion? In this episode, Professor Tim Jackson (University of Surrey, author of Prosperity Without Growth, Post Growth, and The Care Economy) argues that GDP has filled "the God-shaped hole" left in the 20th century, becoming a creed we recite without questioning. Sam and Tim explore where this obsession came from, why tec...

"There is no funding gap in Africa." That is the provocation from Burak Buyuksaraç, CEO of Afri Capital and a 16-year business veteran in Tanzania. He arrived in Dar es Salaam in 2010 as a mining executive, stayed to build a diversified portfolio across tourism, security, insurance, consultancy and trading, and now runs one of East Africa's newer investment firms. In this episode we unpack why the...

Oil above 100 USD. The Strait of Hormuz under pressure. The world scambling for energy. Again. and Again... Every energy crisis sends us looking for the same answers: another pipeline, another terminal, another sanctions package. But what if the real way out is not on Earth at all? Martin Soltau, Co-CEO of Space Solar, returns to the show with a roadmap that has hardened into something impossible...

73,000 sharks are killed every day. 16,000 chemicals are added to plastics, and only 1% are regulated globally. The ocean is in crisis, but almost nobody sees it. Antoinette Vermilye (Co-Founder, Gallifrey Foundation & SHE Changes Climate) has spent over a decade connecting the dots between ocean destruction, human health, climate finance, and gender in global negotiations. In this episode, sh...

What if the ethical framework AI needs was coined thousands of years ago in Africa? Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman is co-director of the Inclusive AI Lab at Utrecht University and founder of the African Folktales Project. She grew up near Ngong Forest in Kenya, where her primary school was literally inside the forest. Today she's on a mission to recover African indigenous knowledge and bring it into the...

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 prot...

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 tha...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Conservanc...

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...

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...

pecial Episode — Recorded live at the Oppenheimer Research Conference 2025. How do we build conservation models that work for both people and nature? In this eye-opening conversation, Lessah Mandoloma (Oxford) and Katie Mackenzie (Jamma Conservation & Communities) unpack the principles of human-centred conservation—a framework that challenges siloed thinking, brings communities into decision-m...

Stop Chasing Sexy Startups: Why Boring Businesses Win in Africa Fifteen years ago, Kyle Schutter had a choice: get a PhD in biofuels or move to Africa and start a biofuel company. He chose the second option — and landed in Kenya after what he calls the “blue cheese test”: if a country could produce local blue cheese, it probably had enough cold chain, middle class and basic infrastructure to build...

Special Episode — Recorded live at the Oppenheimer Research Conference 2025. In South Africa’s fight against rhino poaching, data—not emotion—drives progress. Conservation researchers Dr. Timothy Kuiper and Lucy Chimes share the results of their multi-reserve study on what actually reduces poaching. From aerial patrols, drones, and canine units to the controversial dehorning strategy, they discuss...