Bill Gates Foundation works in Africa: what goes through your mind when you hear those words? We all probably quickly have our thoughts ready, but hold on a second. Just as we often talk about farmers without asking them, we often talk about the African continent without asking people actually living there. So, we never fully grasp how big, how interesting, how full of potential, and how fundamental it is in a regenerative future.

In this new series on African Regenerative Frontrunners, we try to do that differently. We will be talking to amazing regenerative entrepreneurs on the continent, but we obviously are not the best suited to do that and thus won’t be doing this alone. We are collaborating and co-hosting this series with Omoke Brian, aka The Organic Guy, who has been deep in organic agroecology for the last 10 years, based in Kenya, an entrepreneur himself and a podcast host. We will be co-hosting a number of conversations. We will both interview different guests and build upon each other’s episodes, and we kick it off with a double interview where I join Omoke’s show and he joins ours. Will we get it perfect? No. Will we have a lot of fun doing it? Yes.

Why the continent? Most young people this century will be born there. Most land is farmed by smallholders who barely make ends meet. And it is hit hard- really hard- by climate change while having contributed nearly nothing to it. So, all of us better get to work.

What are the big myths, the big pitfalls, when foreigners- especially investors and entrepreneurs- come to this continent and try to “help the poor farmers”? Yes, we will be talking about Gates, GMOs, decolonisation and all the good stuff, and of course get into what Brian sees as big opportunities and what he would do if he were investing 1B, and of course the magic wand question.