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In season six of Happy Porch Radio, we are talking about the circular economy across the African continent. 

Today, we welcome Joanna Bingham and Deborah Nartey of Footprints Africa to provide us with some really powerful context to set the scene for a new season. Footprints Africa is an organization that supports small and medium-sized businesses to adopt future-friendly practices, address the challenges of growth, and create new jobs, while using supply chains as a tool for development.

In this episode, Joanna and Deborah share some insights on the work and research that their team is working on, going on to provide three examples of powerful entrepreneurial projects that embody the circular economy in Africa: Ecodudu, Kaluku Wear, and Pyramid Recycling.

We touch on power dynamics, parallel evolution, and the exploitation of Africa’s rich resources as an essential framing context.

Next, we dive into the role of perception in shaping behavior and how decentralized systems of repair are valued by certain cultures and not by others. We explore the value of perception and mindset, along with the challenges and barriers that these two factors can create.

Joanna tells us more about African Footprints’s focus and aims and, in closing, Joanna and Deborah share their hopes for the future of Africa’s economy with us. 

We hope you join us for some mindset-shifting insights from this impressive duo today!

Joanna Bingham

 

Joanna Bingham is CEO of Footprints Africa.

Joanna is passionate about supporting businesses to improve their social and environmental performance.

She believes in the role of a strong value chain in achieving business success.

Her passion led her to establish Footprints Africa Limited to support SMEs in Ghana and to undertake research on circular economy in Africa.

Deborah Nartey

 

Deborah Nartey is Research Analyst in Footprints Africa.

Deborah is passionate about the use of research in identifying palpable examples of existing knowledge and divulging solutions to current challenges. 

At Footprints, she undertakes research on global best practice in circular economy and how these can be applied in the local context. 

Listen to the episode

Tune in to find out:

 

  • Joanna introduces us to the work that she and the team at Footprints Africa are doing.
  • Some background on the research on circular economy being done at Footprints Africa.
  • The six key insights that Joanna and the team found from the research they did.
  • Three entrepreneurial projects: Ecodudu, Kaluku Wear, and Pyramid Recycling.
  • Power dynamics as an underlying cause for circular economy trends.
  • How parallel evolution occurs across countries.
  • The exploitation of Africa’s rich resources as an essential framing context.
  • How Africa’s context is deeply connected to the global context.
  • The role of perception in shaping behavior.
  • How decentralized systems of repair are not valued.
  • Why a change of mindset is necessary around behavior perception.
  • Challenges and barriers around perceptions of opportunity and wealth.
  • The role of value system in guiding behavior.
  • African Footprints’s focus and aims.
  • The importance of taking rural contexts into account.
  • Why people are at the heart of the work that is done at African Footprints.
  • Joanna and Deborah’s closing thoughts on their hopes for Africa’s future.
  • And much more!

[0:00:05.8] ES: Hello, and welcome back to Happy Porch Radio. In this season, season six, we are talking about circular economy across the continent of Africa. Today, we’ve been joined by two guests from Footprints Africa. Footprints Africa is an organization that supports small and medium sized businesses to adopt future friendly practices, address the challenges of growth and create new jobs and using supply chains in the tool for development. We were really lucky today to have Joanna Bingham, who is the CEO of Footprints Africa and she established the organization to support SMEs in Ghana and undertake research on circular economy in Africa.

We’re also joined by Deborah Nartey, who is a research analyst at Footprints and she undertakes research on global best practices in circular economy and how they can be applied in the local context and I did feel really lucky to have these two women join us today. There was so much good juicy conversation and I just felt like it was the conversation we needed to have at the start of this season in terms of how we approach our interest in the subject and kind of laying the groundwork for looking at the whole context of this massive continent with a rich history and thinking about the developments that are going on right now and how those developments might look in the future.

[0:01:34.4] BOK: Lucky is the right word. Footprints Africa are doing a lot of research into the circular economy and its role and there’s much broader conversation and we – I think our little insight into that and being able to share some really powerful context setting for this season and sort of points to help us understand African context and the difference between that and the stuff that we talked about in season five.

[0:01:59.0] ES: Yeah, it’s just so important I think to recognize. As I think we kind of have done a little bit with season five but even more so here, it’s important to recognize that we’re not just talking about a standalone development of technology or business models or whatever. This is a systemic change and so with that, it comes with all of these extra layers of complexity and intricacy and also innovation, which I think was really nicely highlighted by all the things that both Joanna and Deborah said to this.

[0:02:35.0] BOK: Yeah, we touched on really important, very big scale questions that are vital if we are going to have a genuinely open and honest conversation about circular economy in Africa. Joanna talked fairly eloquently about the challenges of power dynamics and colonialism and the history behind some of the issues that affect the reality of those entrepreneurs and we will be speaking to this season who are then creating business or initiatives in their local countries.

[0:03:05.4] ES: I think that we’ve mentioned this before Barry but our approach to this season is just to learn more about this context and this kind of section of a wider global development of the circular economy but in terms of our positions, as white Europeans who have never lived in Africa.

[0:03:24.2] BOK: I have, when I was three years old in Kenya, that doesn’t matter because I can’t remember anything.

[0:03:29.5] ES: Okay, I’m going to stick with us white Europeans who have never lived in Africa. It’s so important that this context is like where we begin this conversation because we can’t just assume that that’s all taken as red. It’s so vital to this whole context as we’ve said that I just felt like this was a really great conversation to have today.

[0:03:51.0] BOK: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes I think we should record some of the preamble and the post interview stuff because you said something I think which was quite powerful that sometimes it’s difficult for us to be doing this, to be talking about our context in a situation where we don’t really know anything. Joanna made the observation that I think is something that we should embrace now for the rest of season six, which is we are the outsiders, we can ask the dumb questions and help ourselves and listeners to really understand both the challenges and our little taste of the sort of impact of those cultural, historic and power dynamic things which we mentioned.

Also then, importantly, to highlight the innovation and the excitement and the potential to do things like leapfrog forward that these amazing folks do all across Africa.

[0:04:38.4] ES: Yeah, it’s great to be learning all these things and it feels like I’m going to use the word lucky again. We’re in a lucky position to be able to ask these interesting people what they’re doing in this evolving field in a context that is completely new to us and we get to learn all about it.

[0:04:54.3] BOK: Yeah, totally. Without any further ado, let’s meet Joanna and Deborah.

 

[0:05:03.2] JB: I’m Joanna with Footprints Africa, which is an organization that is on a mission to prove that business can be a force for good. We believe that with just some tweaks [inaudible 0:05:12.8] and work we can live in a very different world and how we bring that to life is that we run programs to support companies to improve our social and environmental performance using the B Corp framework and we also undertake research, which hopefully is not boring, and is designed to be practical and not just going to sit on a shelf. 

We are looking for role models and case studies of companies, creating a context the companies we work with can recognize to show what good can look like and show what’s already being done. Deborah can talk a little bit more about the research that we’re undertaking in the circular economy space and some of the projects there.

[0:05:49.9] DN: Thank you Jo, thanks Barry and Emily. I am Deborah Nartey and I’ve been with Footprints for two years now. I’ve been working on research in circular economy and just like Joanna mentioned, the research we started with was the case study collection, trying to build circular economy case studies across Africa to border collection for them and so the ambition is to build 500 cases, to have 500 cases in the collection.

As now we walk alike in the cases, we also try to produce some form or report from the cases so we launched our first report early this year and we are working on the new one to launch, which is going to focus on regenerative agriculture. Apart from that, we are also thinking of designing a deep dive research where we are going to support entrepreneurs to be able to measure the circularity and measure the impact.

Also, this too, the case study collection and the deep dive research, we also want to produce educational tools and materials from the project that we’ll be doing. That’s about it and what you’re waking up.

[0:07:06.5] BOK: Awesome, thank you so much and welcome to Happy Porch Radio, both of you. I’m really excited about this conversation. As the listeners will know, this season, season six of Happy Porch Radio is all about trying to get a little bit of understanding and a bit of a handle of what the circular economy looks like across the whole of African continent so it’s a really big topic and the work that Footprints are doing I think, will, I hope, give us a little taste here and it’s really awesome and also sounds like you’re doing so many different things that it’s inspirational in that way too.

Let’s sort of explore that broad question if that’s okay as a starting point. How, from your experience working with these – looking at these case studies, what’s the sort of state of play, if you like, of the circular economy across the different parts of Africa?

[0:07:51.1] DN: Yeah, from there, what it was an interesting project we did and we found, was it six key insights from the research we did. We noticed that there was a lot of focus on waste over design and entrepreneurs were just trying to take the waste and use it to create new items or new products instead of thinking of how do we design the waste out of our system or out of our production system.

We also noticed that – well, an example I could give for the using of waste is we have a lot of people, we have found people using waste plastic for bricks, that will be our – in our recycling, we also have some who use that’s pyramid recycling in Ghana that uses waste for the Lamba and getting hosts.

We also have a lot of the value addition, goes on out of the continent and actually in the continent. Even though we say circular economy, maybe recycling and all of that, they have the basics going on here and then the rest have to be exported because we don’t have the machinery and the means to do what needs to do to add value to it.

Example of that I would say is closing the loop that recycles broken down phones. They take these phones from low income countries like Ghana and Naga and other countries and these are exported to wherever they have their machines, that’s in Netherlands, Joana?

[0:09:32.9] JB: It’s mixed, depending on what materials. They have some in Italy but they want to make sure they’re protecting people so the machines are disassembled safely and not able to find places that can do that on the continent and also then process the materials.

[0:09:47.5] DN: Another interesting point we saw was that we saw similar projects going on our different parts of the continent so that people in Ghana, we had found [inaudible 0:09:58.7] in Ghana, that was producing feed. They produce animal feed out of wastes that’s organic waste and we saw a similar work in – was being done by Ecodudu, which is also producing feed and compost out of organic waste.

What’s interesting point entrepreneurs were doing were, they were not sitting down to wait for the money or the means to do the initiatives that they wanted to practice and then would use whatever they have to build machines that they needed for the product they wanted to make. An example is Kaluku Wear in Ghana so they produce shoes from waste and waste fabrics and what they did was they did not have another machinery so they improvised and they used a water pump, a machine from the water pump as one of their machines they would use them to produce their shoes.

We also have Pyramid Recycling in Ghana that improvised and used the acacia to help them produce the plastic wood that they wanted to produce. These are some interesting insights we found from the reports as well. We don’t want to say that’s generally what’s happening in Africa but from a report like we tie to it circular economy in Africa so far. That is what we saw from the cases we collected and that is just from journalists that we meet from once we collect it. 

[0:11:30.1] JB: I think the interesting thing to say, to look at some of the underlying causes for the trends that Deborah’s pointed out and a really important one to name is power dynamics and I think – for example, looking at the fact that there’s a big waste focus, if we’re thinking about the pure circular economy and the hierarchy of different activities, you got your recycle and recycling thing right at the bottom. 

Several activities sitting in the sort of recycle domain of that hierarchy and I would link some power dynamics in terms of four larger companies, the design is not happening on the continent, it’s not happening for the continent. We have these amazing entrepreneurs who are saying, “Right, we’re going to do something with this waste” and who are kind of picking up the pieces of what’s being left behind. 

I think it’s really important that when we’re thinking about this context and I’m so [inaudible 0:12:17.6] doing a podcast specifically on this context that what are some of the underlying factors that are driving what circular economy looks like and that we really address those, so we can make sure that Africa takes the amazing opportunity it has to leapfrog some of the crappy practices that are happening in other parts of the so called more developed world that they’re not then sort of hamstrung in the part of development by those companies in other countries.

[0:12:45.5] ES: Thanks for that. Those insights are very helpful for me. I hope also for the listeners but for me personally, in terms of getting that nice overview of your research and what Africa and the circular economy looks like right now as you say, so far. Let me just recap a second. You said, there’s a focus on waste and not necessarily designing out the waste, which Joanna, you can imagine this link to the second insight of the fact that a lot of the value that’s added actually goes outside of the continent and doesn’t stay within Africa and there was also a point that you made, Deborah about entrepreneurs using their initiative and building innovative technology and machinery in order to do what they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise in terms of this circularity. Is there something I missed?

[0:13:34.4] DN: We also spoke about the parallel evolution, similar businesses happen across countries.

[0:13:41.7] ES: Yeah, across the continent, there’s lots of simultaneous development in this sector. Thanks, that was a really helpful overview to begin with and I liked what you said Joanna as well about this question of the like, systemic nature of bringing circularity into the economy and it’s not just about, “Okay, let’s just recycle waste, just a simple solution, which is recycle waste.” We just design products that don’t have all this material that’s going to be waste because the whole context of the African continent needs to be taken into account. 

Is that something that’s specific to Africa? I mean, there are obviously other parts of the world that are also developing their circular economy, what do you think is kind of a particular to the African context?

[0:14:30.1] JB: One thing I would say is that Africa is multiple contexts, but Africa is a continent of vast wealth and incredible resources and it is enormously exploited. I think that’s really important as a framing context because we need to move where it’s kind of patronizing image and we really need to use the amazing opportunity of systemic [inaudible 0:14:52.7] that circular economy presents to give more self-determination to countries to evolve in ways that suits them and make sense within that context of young populations, of resource wealth.

A very decentralized population as well with very rural context. I think, one thing that’s very important when thinking about circular economy and the African context is that it’s deeply linked to our global context, it’s all of our context because the food we eat, the clothes we wear, all come from somewhere and that this point around about getting new models for development, models for our economy to operate in is actually critical and there’s a huge opportunity and we really have to – much more credit and space to the economies and the countries that are on the continent to determine I think.

[0:15:44.9] DN: I would say, just liked you said, talk of protecting the natural resources that we have and being efficient with our resources. A main thing I would just add is reformation of our behavior and perception. I wouldn’t say circular economy is new in maybe Ghana or Africa, it’s something that used to be the way of factors if I could say.

You know that you’re going to be handed your elder sister’s clothing when she grows out of them. It used to be like what we do, but right now, we feel that’s for the poor and that behavior, or that perception is what is driving the increase in waste and taking us away from what we would have done to protect ourselves and economy.

I would say, one thing I would add is information of our behavior and perception of the circular economy and how we use and we use our resources.

[0:16:52.5] JB: As I’ve said, thinking about that that adds to the kind of decentralization piece I was saying. In Ghana, I can get everything fixed. If my kettle’s broken, I’ll find someone who can fix it and like Deborah said, those models are not valorised. Those kind of decentralised systems of repair are not valorised in the same way and people don’t perceive them to be as amazing in value as they are in terms of keeping materials and keeping product used at the highest possible value.

I think that’s definitely a rethink required there. Everyone thinks about businesses and read this as kind of re-corp or focus of putting a business at the forefront of something and not seeing how this value of global networks is incredibly powerful as well for delivering the circular economy goals.

[0:17:35.2] ES: Yeah, there’s a lot of good points in that I’d like to pick up on. Deborah, I think the point you made about this kind of – I suppose lots of people call it kind of a thrifty lifestyle of hand me down’s and repairing stuff that is essentially circularity. I think that’s the thing actually. It’s like, when rich people do it, it’s seen as circularity and when poor people do it, it’s seen as thrifty.

That change in mindset is part of the systemic change though I think Joanna was talking about, of there is an opportunity for the development of the circular economy to actually also evolve other underlying issues. Is that kind of how you see it? 

[0:18:00.3] DN: Yes, so it is a general change in mindset but it has also have to do with social values, what society would say about circularity or what society sees as circularity or not. Even though the rich and the poor can do the same thing, it would mean differently when someone from the outside or when society wants to assess what is happening. I would say yes and also to say that society as a whole, which is individual people making up society needs to have that change of mindsets and that perception around the use of resources. 

[0:18:55.2] JB: Again, another example of that is around homes. As more research is being done and we are seeing any energy challenges or through up even from access perspective, we are seeing that things like mud houses are actually incredibly energy efficient and they have good insulating properties and will keep people warm when it’s cold and cold when it’s hot and you go to kind of the emerging middle class and you say, “Do you have a mud house?” and they’re like, “No, I’m not having that. That’s a poor people house. I want to have the concrete walls. I want to have the tin roof and I want to have the air conditioning.” 

It is a really interesting challenge because people’s – aspirations shouldn’t be denied like everyone has a right to aspirations. Similarly with supporting a community toilet and a school and I was saying to them setting up a composting toilet and then you wouldn’t have issues to access to water and she said, “Look, they don’t want a composting toilet. They want a toilet that flushes” you know, they feel that we are being patronized to be given a composting toilet like because you’re poor then you can just have this drop toilet because that’s what they – said with poverty and so that’s some challenges and some barriers in that regard. 

[0:20:04.6] DN: Yeah and I will just add to what you just said. In the northern region here in Ghana, my knowledge from we marked at school we went, you know the building with the mud houses and they have a way. The design is round because of the weather, the place is extremely hot and that kind of prevents the heat from getting in the rooms. I mean, it is contusive for the environment but then they are are moving away from that because if you get developed and they are growing and so people want to have the block houses with the air conditioners and all of that and just to call myself out-I remember I was posted there after my bachelor’s degree to do my national service and upon getting there, you know people suggests. They were showing me houses I could rent and I was like, “Were you actually expecting me to take the mud house?” and that was the attitude towards using the mud house. It’s just something that we have already accepted and we need to work towards leaving that place of thinking having so much means you’re rich or you are high in society. 

[0:21:21.3] ES: Yeah, I think it kind of comes back again to this question of the value system as Joanna was saying like where value is placed in the society is really important and if there’s value in a concrete house with air conditioning and not so much value in a mud house, then the kind of social status of it is inevitable and kind of understanding how we shift those values I think is a really interesting conversation. 

[0:21:52.8] JB: Also again, I mentioned about power dynamics. It comes back a little bit to that, so when the roundtable for sustainable palm oil, which was set up to avoid some of the environmental challenges and the labor challenges involved in the supply chains of palm oil and they came up with certain rules and regulations and Indonesia basically turned around and said, “This is colonialism. You have cut down all of your rainforests, you’ve cut down rainforests in other place and now you are telling us that we can’t monetize ours? You are basically [inaudible 0:22:22.9] wealth and then you are not allowing us access to do the same?” 

“If you want us to do that, then you need to contribute” and I think there’s a lot of strong arguments in that especially if we look at kind of the history of how our economies have developed. If we are different countries to go down different paths, we can’t just say, “Oh, you should do this” given [inaudible 0:22:42.4] our globalized supply chains, we have to participate in supporting those processes. 

[0:22:48.1] ES: Yeah, that is really interesting as well and as you said Joanna, you know, if people don’t want a compost toilet, they want a flushing toilet, why deny them that? That is something that they want, you can’t just say, “No you’re not getting it because the compost toilets are more circular” and so yeah, that power dynamic that’s historic. You know, it is not something that is kind of new in this context. It is certainly not something that can be changed overnight. 

It’s a centuries old kind of tradition that keeps coming back around to this. I feel like I can talk about this for hours but I want to hear more about Footprints and what you do. 

[0:23:27.1] JB: Sure, so as I mentioned, we are very passionate that business can be a force for good and that can create value and in the same way sort of humans are not separate from nature. Business is not separate from the community and they have a role in the community. They share resources with the community and it is really important that that can be acknowledged. We support [inaudible 0:23:48.6] with our programs, we support businesses to really kind of look at that and see what role they want to play and who they want to be in their communities. 

Then with this work that we’re doing on the circular economy side, what we’re really curious about with both the eco program we run and with the circular economy work we’re doing is helping companies to identify for themselves, so it is not anyone imposing from the outside how you should be doing business or what toilet you should be having but what change you want to create in the world and then how do we support you to do that in a way that also can generate revenue for you because there is absolutely no shame in profits. 

It is absolutely critical for it to be sustainable but also it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with social and environmental change. We are looking for [inaudible 0:24:31.8] ways that we can support that and I think a big part of that that we’ve been talking about is supporting companies to determine for themselves to see role models that are different from what they would normally see. Rather than you’re kind of your big international companies who are not be paying taxes and they are certainly not paying for the next [inaudible 0:24:48.7] that they’re causing or the kind of local role models who probably kind of be people with big flashy cars, how can we create role models from those entrepreneurs who are doing incredible things across the continent in challenging circumstances where resources may be constrained and yet, they’re still been able to create phenomenal business models. 

To really championing those business models and getting them a bigger platform in the hope that they can get access to what they need to scale their work and also in the hope that it can change a little bit the mindset of circular economy because it is heavily dominated by European and North American context and doesn’t take into account the incredible opportunities and the different context that are on the continent. For example, like you are talking about decentralization but I think it is absolutely critical. 

We have to take more into account about rural dynamics and rural communities [inaudible 0:25:40.8] support better resilience and we need to kind of change mindsets in our global value chains and start to really having serious conversations about how value is created and shared across value chains. That’s some of the work we’re doing, I am trying to support those companies and start those conversations. Deborah, have I missed anything? 

[0:26:01.2] DN: When you were speaking, you’ve said everything but then I just – a statement just came into mind, a cliché, which I used to say with my colleague [inaudible 0:26:12.3] and just to my friends, I’ll say that at my work, we are saving the world before humans vanishes completely. Again, that’s just a cliché but to say that we want to look for practical solutions that are working, already working and to share those solutions so that people can look at them and they can reform or improve in their businesses or how they engage with business and people and the environment.

[0:26:46.1] JB: I think that was relevant that you keep saying people in that sentence because people really are at the heart of what we’re doing. One of the things that we are aware of especially from running our B Corp program is that people create change and people create companies and cultures and so a big focus of the work we’re doing is working with people and supporting them to have access to tools and knowledge and also just support because the number of fires they are fighting on a daily basis is unbelievable. 

To be running a small business or a medium sized business on the African continent there are definitely challenges from infrastructural to bureaucratic and others for them to be running a business that also has a social or environmental kind of ethos at heart when you are trying to go above and beyond standard business practices, they are taking on so much. Sometimes, they just need someone to say, “You’re doing an amazing job and we’re here with you” because it is a lonely journey. 

[0:27:37.6] BOK: That is amazing and it sounds just to sort of make that a bit matter, I was about to say that Footprints are doing an amazing job telling them that they are doing an amazing job for vision I mean. I think that is really important work, supporting the people doing the vital on the ground work. A couple of things you said that really stood out for me, first of all, Deborah you’re talking about that sort of cliché, the big mission but also then really it’s practical. 

People on the ground doing these innovative, I don’t have the resources so I’m going to take this other machine from somewhere else and make it do what I want it to do kind of mindset and then Joanna, you also said about business not being separate but it is being part like in the community and people and business, it is all part of the same system, systemic thinking. That I think is obviously incredibly true in Africa. I suspect it should be and could be more of the focus in my own context in Europe as well. 

I wanted to go back and sort of tie some of that back to something you said earlier. At the very start of this conversation, you talked about you used the word leap frog and for the sort of last few minutes of this conversation, it would be really nice to talk about the future. When you said leap frog and when you imagine what’s exciting or the future of the work that you’re doing and that these entrepreneurs and people are doing in Africa, what would that look like for you? 

[0:28:51.6] DN: Doing this, imagine right now the future world we have in mind, which we’re designing. I don’t know if I can put to words but we are looking, are working towards a regenerative wealth where business doesn’t have to stand on its own but it is used for a force for good like Joanna said and yeah, where people take responsibility for the product that they are making for the solutions they are initiating get to know how it impacts the environment and the people around them and how that impacts is going to reflect in years to come not just thinking of the caring of  it’s people but thinking also of the future and people to come after this generation so that we are maintaining and protecting what we have now for the future. This looks quite theoretical but yeah.

[0:29:50.0] JB: That’s beautiful Deb. I think for my side it’s both people in Africa and outside of Africa changing their mindset towards Africa and what is there. When we talk about leap frogging for example, if you think about mobile money, an incredible innovation that is in many countries in Africa and here in the UK where I am originally from, it is so much easier to make payments when I am in Ghana and that’s happened and if outside and alongside the banking system what it is meant that there is less brick and mortar banking required,it is much more accessible to many more people, so I think things like that given the opportunity and really valorising what’s happening and what is possible because the dead weight of the linear economy that is kind of really shackling us in any other parts of the world is less the case in many African context and as Deborah says, there are many practices that are still very close to people’s hearts. It is still happening that we need to really champion and change the mindset of to rethink how things can happen differently. 

I keep talking about power dynamics but it is absolutely critical. I would really love to see a rebalancing of power dynamics of supply chains but also with development agencies and governments. I am not trying to get on my soap box of adding for it but it makes me mad when we look at our kind of very colonial history of extraction that we then come back with very patronizing aid to support the development of the countries that we have already stripped bare. I mean not stripped bare, that is a little extreme but I would really love to see some rebalancing in that regard. 

[0:31:23.6] BOK: In some cases, it may not even be that extreme but I think that is a soap box that’s worth standing on and I fully support that. Unfortunately and this is an amazing conversation, I really appreciate both of you joining us. It’s a truly amazing conversation and we have – I often say this but I don’t think I’ve meant it more in the past that we’ve barely scratched the surface of the conversation, never mind the actual issues. 

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the season when we will be talking to some of these entrepreneurs but hopefully, we’ll be able to catch up with some of the ones that are useful to continue case studies and others across Africa. We come from this podcast from in the past, we’ve talked about very European level of conversations where we’re talking about technology and so on and so this season very much is about us trying to understand a very different context for us and sharing some of that story I hope. 

Thank you again for joining us and just very final question, for those that want to find out more about the kind of work that you’re doing and the kind of entrepreneurs and case studies that you mentioned, where should they go? 

[0:32:24.1] DN: We have our report we should mentioned earlier, which you can find on our website. We have almost everything on our website, footprintsafrica.co but we also have handles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. In LinkedIn, you can find at Footprints Africa, on Twitter it’s @footprintsafric and on Instagram @footprintsafricagh. Those are the places to find our work. For case studies that we produce, we’ve also featured them on the Knowledge Hub to give them that global publicity.

They are also on the Knowledge Hub and we have designed Angelica Tidner with Greg Airedale, which is also on our website and people can have a look at that. Angelica Tidner of circular economy initiatives Joanna, did I leave anyone out?

[0:33:20.3] JB: No but I think it is important to say that in the spirit of circular economy, we’re always open to collaboration, so we’re very happy to speak to those who might want to partner with us and in terms of collecting these 500  to ourselves a pretty punchy goal there. Anything we can have to reaching that goal and to make sure we could have as much inclusion as possible from countries from all across the continent says, it’s well represented. All language basis we’re kind of be able to be dominating in the English speaking ones right now, so we’re very open to partnering. We’d love support in reaching those goals.

[0:33:49.7] BOK: Wonderful, thank you. Hopefully, there will be someone listening who is interested and will definitely get in touch. Just a reminder for everybody, we’ll put all of those links that Deborah mentioned on happyporchradio.com as usual on the show notes. Thank you again, we really appreciate your time today and sharing a little taste here of the amazing work that Footprints are doing and understanding of this conversation about circular economy in Africa. 

[0:34:09.6] JB: Thanks for having us. 

[0:34:10.8] ES: Thank you both and good luck. 

[0:34:14.8] ES: Thanks for listening to this episode of Happy Porch Radio. I hope you enjoyed it. You can hear more of our episodes at happyporchradio.com. You can also get in touch with us there, let us know what you think. Let us know if you have any ideas or if you want to talk to us about something. We’d also love it if you can share this podcast, review, rate, tell your pals, tell your neighbors, tell everyone. 

[0:34:36.4] BOK: Tell your dog.

[0:34:36.8] ES: Tell your dog, listen along with the whole family. 

[0:34:36.8] BOK: My name is Barry, and I founded happyporch.com and Happy Porch fund and support podcast. At Happy Porch, we do technology and software development for purpose-led businesses and we are particularly excited about the norm of digital as an enabler for the circular economy. If you’re working on solutions for the big problems we faced today, problems like climate change and biodiversity laws and global inequality, then let’s connect. Visit happyporch.com and get in touch. 

[0:35:07.1] ES: My name is Emily, and I am a coach, a facilitator, and a podcaster. My projects focus on personal development, innovation for a better world and connecting with nature. My latest podcasting adventure, alongside Happy Porch Radio, is exploring the world of carbon removal. Find out more about this and everything that I do at emilyswaddle.com or you can get in touch with me at [email protected]