3 SHOW NOTES

03:10 Eswatini is a small, lush landlocked country in southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides, except in the northeast, where it shares a border with Mozambique. In 2018, the country formerly known as Swaziland officially changed its name to the Kingdom of Eswatini. This change was made to honour the country's 50th anniversary of independence from British rule and to reflect the nation's indigenous name, which translates to ‘land of the Swazis’. The greatest Queen Mother and Regent in Swati History was Queen Labotsibeni Mdluli, fondly known as Gwamile, the ‘Indomitable One’. She was an astute leader and diplomat, and unbeknownst to many,  was part of the founding of South Africa’s political party, the ANC (then known as the SANNC) and helped fund the launch of its newspaper, Abantu-Batho.

07:30 MBAs Without Borders (MWB) is an international non-profit charity that empowers social entrepreneurs in developing countries by recruiting top global MBAs to provide on-the-ground consulting to small business owners and non-profits in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The programme embeds MBA graduates' business acumen and skills into local organizations, including NGOs, social enterprises, and development programmes. They provide consulting services to help these organizations improve their management, financial capacities, and access to capital, ultimately promoting economic growth. 

07:53 Gone Rural was founded by the late Jenny Thorne in 1992 (who first started small income-generation projects in the 1970s) with the mission of creating economic empowerment for rural women in Eswatini through basket weaving. It offers home-based work to over 700 rural artisans in often remote communities, and provides market access, product design, materials and training to the women in order to earn an income for their beautiful traditional handcraft. The brand has gone on to become globally recognized for producing high quality table ware, contemporary home products, lighting and woven wall art.

11:22 Technoserve is ‘a pioneer in leveraging the power of business and markets to create sustainable pathways out of poverty. At TechnoServe, over  ’90% of our staff are from the countries where they work. This local expertise allows us to apply world-class analysis within the local context, designing and delivering tailored interventions. Our embedded approach addresses real adversity faced by real people, wherever they are.’

12:37 ‘Le Cordon Bleu’s name (blue ribbon in French) and logo are a direct reference to the French order of knights of the Holy Spirit, founded in 1578, also known as 'Chevaliers du Saint Esprit', whose members wore a medal suspended on a blue ribbon. The feast that followed the knighting ceremonies had a reputation for being very grand, and the food spectacular.

Le Cordon Bleu school’s prestige in Paris in the early 20th century contributed to the expression of being a 'Cordon Bleu', meaning a talented chef. As Philéas Gilbert wrote in La Revue Culinaire in 1939, the lessons at Le Cordon Bleu symbolise culinary talent pushed towards utter perfection. It all began in 1895, when journalist Marthe Distel founded the first weekly culinary magazine of the period, La Cuisinière Cordon Bleu. The magazine had 20,000 subscribers. Marthe Distel rapidly came up with the idea of inviting subscribers to take part in free cuisine lessons, with chefs demonstrating recipes. The magazine reflected the great French bourgeois cuisine of that era but also demonstrated an openness to world cuisines as it was published in several languages.’

14:07 The Bushfire festival is a diverse, inclusive and family-friendly music and arts festival set in the beautiful farmland and mountains of the peaceful Malkerns Valley in Eswatini. It is one of Africa’s largest multicultural gatherings. The first festival was held in 2007, with the goal of creating a platform for artists and addressing social and environmental issues. The festival's founders, Jiggs and Sholto Thorne, envisioned it as a vehicle for creative activism, encouraging dialogue and action on pressing challenges. The festival was sparked by small gigs at House on Fire, an event space built on the Thorne family farm.

22:38 Pick ’n Pay is a major retail business in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, operating over 2,279 stores across multiple formats in eight countries across Africa. It offers a wide range of products, including food, groceries, clothing, and general merchandise, across various store formats like supermarkets, hypermarkets, and online. The company has a significant presence in South Africa and other African countries, including Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In 2025 Pick n Pay had a total of 570 supermarkets, including company-owned, franchise stores, and hypermarkets. They employ 90,000 people across their company-owned and franchise operations. This number includes both Pick n Pay and Boxer employees.  

24:08 Swazi Candles is a manufacturing company established in 1982 in Eswatini. Their ‘core business is candle making, both traditional paraffin wax as well as soya candle tea lights’. They are known for their vibrant use of colours and their unmistakeable patterns. Their colourful, handmade product range also features wax encased LED lights, pure vegetable glycerine soaps and maroela oil body balm. They export to over 20 countries.

27:14 Fair trade is trade between companies in developed countries and producers in developing countries in which fair prices are paid to the producers. ‘Fair trade traces its roots to 1946 when Edna Ruth Byler, a volunteer for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), visited an MCC sewing class in Puerto Rico, where she discovered the talent the women had for creating beautiful lace and the extraordinary poverty in which they lived despite their hard work.’

29:10 USAID, an acronym for the United States Agency for International Development, was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to administer civilian foreign aid programmes. It emerged from the merger of several existing foreign aid agencies and was tasked with promoting global economic prosperity, strengthening democracy and providing humanitarian assistance. . On 20 January 2025, US president Donald Trump issued an executive order to reevaluate and realign United States foreign aid, freezing all foreign aid for a 90-day review, effectively terminating many USAID projects around the world at short notice.

29:12 The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Southern Africa Trade and Investment Hub (USAID TradeHub) engaged with partners across the region to increase sustainable economic growth, global export competitiveness and trade in targeted southern African countries. It supported these objectives by increasing exports from southern African countries to South Africa and the United States (under the AGOA), boosting capital and technology flows from South Africa to other southern African countries and providing targeted trade facilitation support to Zambia.

The USAID TradeHub worked with market actors to identify and resolve enterprise constraints and to implement sustainable solutions through market-based trade and investment facilitation services. The hub was based in Pretoria, South Africa, with resident representatives in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. The programme worked with Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini and Zambia.

29:58 Burger King partnered with Black Mamba in 2012.

32:09 MasterChef Australia is an Australian competitive cooking reality show based on the original British MasterChef. The original MasterChef cooking competition series was created by British film director Franc Roddam, inspired by a desire to prove that the UK had talented home cooks. The first series aired on BBC in 1990, and the show has since become a global phenomenon with numerous international adaptations. Roddam conceived the idea after hearing people in Hollywood mocking British cuisine. He wanted to showcase the culinary skills of home cooks in Britain. The original series focused on amateur cooks competing to be crowned Britain's best. MasterChef has since been adapted in over 65 territories worldwide. 

32:27 A bakkie is a colloquial term used in South Africa for a pickup truck. It's a very common and widely used term that originates from Afrikaans, where bak means ‘container’ or ‘tray’.

34:37 In South Africa, SPAR is a retail chain with a network of independently owned stores that operate under various formats like SPAR neighbourhood stores, SPAR Express (often at petrol forecourts), KWIKSPAR (convenience stores) and SUPERSPAR supermarkets. It is part of SPAR International, a global organisation that originated in the Netherlands in 1932 as DESPAR and followed a cooperative model aimed at leveraging collective purchasing powers for better deals. South Africa was the first country outside of Europe to join in 1963.

34:38 Checkers is a well-known supermarket chain in South Africa, owned by sister retailer and discount chain Shoprite since 1991. It was founded in 1956 by Norman Herber in Johannesburg and was later expanded and made successful by Raymond Ackerman. Checkers has 308 Checkers and Checkers Hyper stores in southern Africa, specifically in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. Shoprite Group owns Checkers since 1991, and is ‘the largest South African retailer by market capitalisation, sales, profit, number of employees and customers.’ It operates in nine other African countries, employing 163,000 employees across 3417 stores.

35:04 Food Lovers Market, originally known as Fruit & Veg City, is a South African retail company with over 100 stores across southern Africa. Brothers Brian and Mike Copping opened their first Fruit & Veg store in Cape Town in 1993 and have overseen its expansion over a period of 30 years. It is a family business that transformed from a single fruit and veg store into South Africa's largest privately-owned retailer. The company incorporates sister brands like Food Lover's Eatery, FreshStop, FVC International, Seattle Coffee Company, Diamond's Discount Liquor, and Market Liquors. 

40:18 GUBA - short for Grow, Unite, Build Africa - is ‘a social enterprise organisation dedicated to the advancement of diaspora Africans and Africans back home through various socio-economic programme and initiatives’. It was established in 2009 in Malkerns in Eswatini. At the heart of their work is permaculture; a thinking tool for designing low carbon, highly productive human & environmental systems. Their focus is on abundant food systems, appropriate technologies, social innovation and support for local entrepreneurship.

40:32 Regenerative agriculture, while having gained modern prominence recently, has deep roots in ancient and indigenous farming practices. It's a holistic approach to farming that emphasizes rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity, and improving water cycles, aiming to create a more sustainable and resilient food system. While the term itself is relatively modern, the underlying principles have been employed by various cultures for centuries. 

40:38 World Vision is a Christian organisation that ‘empowers people out of poverty. For real. For good. Since 1950.’ The organisation was founded by Bob Pierce three years after he gave his last $5 in his pocket to help care for an abandoned Chinese girl in 1947. Originally based in the state of Oregon, the organisation at first focused on missions service for emergencies in East Asia. Today World Vision has ‘become the largest Christian international non-governmental organisation working in nearly 100 countries worldwide.’ It prides itself on protecting children and their rights in places where others dare not or cannot offer assistance. 

57:12  HACCP, short for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, is the internationally recognised risk-based system for managing food safety throughout the food supply chain - from food production and preparation processes, to packaging and distribution. It's a globally recognized method used to identify, evaluate, and control potential hazards throughout the food production process, from raw materials to consumption. Essentially, HACCP helps prevent, reduce, or eliminate biological, chemical, and physical food safety hazards. HACCP was initially developed in the 1960s by the Pillsbury Company for NASA to ensure the safety of food for astronauts. 

01:00:00 Clicks is a retail-led healthcare group that was founded in 1968 by Jack Goldin in Cape Town, South Africa. Initially conceived as a drugstore, restrictive legislation in South Africa prevented the immediate realization of Goldin's vision for pharmacies within the stores. It wasn't until 2004 that the first Clicks pharmacy opened after legislation changed to allow corporate ownership of pharmacies. Today, Clicks is a leading health and beauty retailer with over 945 stores and over 730 pharmacies in southern Africa. Makro South Africa was established in 1971, the first Makro store to be opened outside of Europe after the founding of Makro by Dutch Conglomerate SHV Holdings and the German company Metro AG. It began as a wholesale operation, requiring a card for bulk purchases, but has since evolved into a retail giant open to the public. Makro became part of Massmart in 1990, which was later acquired by Walmart in 2011.

01:02 Partners in Food Solutions is an independent nonprofit organisation that links corporate volunteers from their consortium of food companies with promising entrepreneurs in 12 African countries. The nonprofit is committed ‘to improving food security, nutrition and economic development in Africa by empowering their employee volunteers to share expertise and a combined 700 years of food industry experience with dynamic and promising food companies throughout Africa'.

01:02:03 Gus le Breton's AfricanOptimist interview.

01:04 Mr Price Home is a division of Mr Price Group, which opened its first store as a clothing store in Klerksdorp in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1985. It added the Milady’s women clothing brand in 1987, the group’s linen chain Sheet Street in 1996, opened Mr Price Home in 1998 and Mr Price Sport in 2006. It acquired homeware retailer Yuppiechef in 2021 and athletic apparel retail chain Studio88 in 2023. The group runs 3030 stores across 9 divisions, with 2771 in South Africa and a further 259 across Africa.

01:07 Kentucky Fried Chicken is a chicken fast food brand started by Harland Sanders in the United States, who in old photos is recognisable by the white goatee, glasses and unique bow tie. After serving in the army (presumably up to the rank of Colonel) and trying his hand at several careers, he began running service stations in Nicholasville and Corbin, Kentucky. There, he started serving his fried chicken to interstate travellers, eventually perfecting the pressure cooker method and his ‘secret recipe’ of 11 herbs and spices. When he turned 40 in 1930, he bought a roadside motel in Corbin, and began serving his southern style chicken in its 6-seater restaurant. The first franchise opened 22 years laster in Salt Lake City in Utah. The original KFC bucket of chicken was created in 1957. 

KFC South Africa first entered the South African market in 1971 when it opened its first restaurant in Orange Grove in Johannesburg, after the CEO of KFC’s holding company visited the country to go on safari. It was one of the first fried chicken brands to establish a presence on the continent. Initially, KFC had a mix of company-owned and franchised outlets. However, due to US legislation in 1987, the company had to divest its 60 company-owned stores to a South African holding company. The franchised outlets were not affected by this divestment. KFC reacquired its former assets when sanctions were lifted in 1994. Today KFC has the widest global footprint of any fast food brand with 30,000 restaurants in 150 countries. 

01:19 Sarah Dusek's AfricanOptimist interview

01:19: 56 A case for Optimism, a beautifully penned piece of writing by previous WIRED editor Kevin Kelly on the value of and the necessity for optimism. I found this piece after thinking of the AfricanOptimist brand name, and love that Kelly nails it with these words: ‘In the long run, optimists shape the future.’ As Kelly says it, to be a pessimist is easy, because you judge based on the past, but optimists are truly the doers and makers of the future.