What happens when environmental sustainability and economic development pull in different directions, and what if they don’t have to? 

In this Afri-CAN episode, we sit down with Aziliz Le Rouzo, Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) leading the Amplifying Stories of Agroecology Practices and Principles (ASAPP) project, and Nhilce Esquivel, Research Fellow and Climate Resilience Lead in SEI’s Sanitation and Health team. Together, they unpack the hard questions: who should be cutting emissions, who is forced to adapt, and why climate change is as much about justice as it is about carbon. 

We explore how degrowth and agroecology challenge traditional ideas of “catching up”, and what it means to build food, water and sanitation systems that restore ecosystems instead of depleting them. From Bolivian farmers growing crops at 4,000 metres to African countries navigating green protectionism and carbon border taxes, this conversation asks whether development itself needs to be redefined. 

If you’ve ever wondered whether environmental solutions like agroecology and degrowth are realistic in low- and middle-income countries – or how local knowledge and co-creation can reshape adaptation on the ground – this episode is for you. 

When a university degree can increase someone’s income many times over, who should carry the risk of paying for it – the student, the state, or society as a whole? 

In this episode of Afri-CAN, we explore how Income Share Agreements (ISAs) are changing access to higher education in Africa. Instead of taking on traditional debt, students commit to paying back a small percentage of their income only once they have meaningful employment, with built-in caps and protections. The result is a revolving fund that can support generation after generation of learners. 

Our guests are Batya Blankers, CEO and Founder of Chancen International, and Nkazimulo Zitha, Managing Director of Pharo Schools. Together they unpack what it means to say “youth are investable”, share data on graduation, employment and repayment rates from Chancen’s ISA model in Rwanda and South Africa, and reflect on how Pharo Schools thinks about sustainable financing across its scholarship and school networks. It is a thoughtful, hopeful conversation that goes right to the heart of education, finance and development. 

What does it mean to rebuild an economy almost from scratch? In this episode, we travel to Somaliland, a country that emerged from civil war with its private sector in ruins and has had to reinvent its institutions, markets and businesses largely on its own. We speak with Hana Kaise, Co-founder and General Partner of Bilow Capital, and Ahmed Ali Mohamed, Co-founder of Bilow Capital, serial entrepreneur and ecosystem builder, about how they are working from within to unlock the potential of small and medium enterprises. Together, they unpack why finance alone is not enough, how the Bilow Venture Lab helps founders become truly “investment ready” in a Somaliland context, and how the Rise platform is giving diaspora Somalis a trusted path to invest back home. It is a hopeful, grounded conversation about patient capital, collaboration and what it really takes to grow a resilient private sector in a place the world often overlooks. 

We live in an age of information overload, where producing research and “impact evidence” has become a priority, but turning all this knowledge into something that genuinely informs the choices of policy makers remains a major challenge. 

In this episode, we look at evidence synthesis, which is the disciplined process of bringing many studies together and analysing them to see what the overall evidence actually shows. Rather than building reforms around a single striking study, we explore what it means to ground decisions in a shared evidence base and how this can change the way education systems learn, adapt and improve over time. 

Our guests discuss how this way of working can be woven into the everyday machinery of government, why organisational culture and incentives matter just as much as rigorous methods, and where artificial intelligence might either strengthen or distort the process. From questions of whose evidence is included to the emerging role of “evidence labs” in low- and middle-income countries, the conversation offers a fresh and thoughtful lens on research, power and policy. 

Joining the discussion are Samuel Kembou, a global lead for Learning and Evidence at the Jacobs Foundation who helps shape dynamic learning and impact measurement across education systems, and Jonathan Kay, Head of Evidence Synthesis at the Education Endowment Foundation who leads work turning global education research into practical guidance for schools and policy makers. 

What if artificial intelligence could help us understand water in a way that transforms whole communities? 

In this episode, we explore how Pharo Foundation is working with AI, computer vision, and geospatial data to rethink what it means to measure and manage water in Somaliland. We look at why access to water is so central to education, agriculture and livelihoods, and how better information can help development organisations move from good intentions to truly informed decisions. 

You will hear how “Camel Cam”, Pharo’s AI enabled monitoring system, is changing the way we see the impact of rural dams and opening new questions about what effective water projects really look like. Rather than focusing on the technology for its own sake, our guests reflect on how AI can act as an accelerator for local expertise, not a replacement for it. 

Joining the conversation are Dr Jay Taneja, a computer scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who leads the STIMA Lab on infrastructure measurement and analytics, and Dennis Cheruiyot, a Machine Learning Engineer at Pharo Foundation who builds AI driven monitoring systems for water resources in Somaliland. 

What if we could see poverty from space and respond to it faster and more fairly? 

In this episode, we explore the new frontier of geospatial AI and Earth observation: the science and craft of observing our planet from space and turning those images into insight. From jagged coastlines and dense forests to changing seasons and expanding cities, satellites are quietly capturing the patterns of life on Earth every day. 

Our guests unpack how these patterns, when combined with artificial intelligence, can help us understand where need is greatest and how to target support more effectively. They discuss why many popular AI solutions still depend on smartphones and constant connectivity, and why that leaves millions of people invisible to the digital economy. Stories from places like Cameroon and Togo bring this challenge to life and highlight promising examples of geo targeted social protection that work even where the internet does not. 

Joining the conversation are Dr Rachel Adams, Founding CEO of the Global Centre on AI Governance and a leading voice on AI, inequality and global governance, and Vivek Sakhrani, Vice President of Product and Solutions at Atlas AI who leads the company’s global Geo AI portfolio across international development and supply chain analytics. 

If you are curious about how advanced technology can serve people who are often left out of technological progress, this conversation offers a clear and accessible guide to a complex and rapidly evolving field. 

Across Africa, low cost housing is too often treated as a numbers game. But this episode leans into a different vision: design that is practical and low cost, yet still protective, dignified and rooted in local life.

Drawing from work with Ghana’s Ga communities along the West African coast, we explore how thoughtful choices can help increase safety, strengthen communities, and confront everyday environmental pressures like climate constraints and plastic in waterways. We also look at why seemingly simple architecture can create a sense of pride and cultural belonging.

Joining us are Julian Mowbray, Partner at Mowbray Architects, and Maria Alonso, Partner at Mowbray Architects. Together, we unpack how architecture can turn big development ideals into spaces that expand people’s freedoms in daily life.

Across the world, small and medium enterprises carry the greatest financial risk, even when they are the least able to absorb it. What if finance could be rebalanced to make opportunity fairer for everyone?

In this episode, we explore how rethinking foreign exchange (FX) risk and moving it from local entrepreneurs to global markets could unlock billions for sustainable projects in developing economies. Joining the discussion are Roopal Kanabar, CEO of Sustainabar, and Christopher Hunter, Chief Risk Officer at Pharo Management.

Together, they discuss how innovative financial tools could bridge the worlds of development and finance, lowering the cost of capital, empowering small businesses, and creating a fairer, more resilient global economy.

Africa holds some of the world’s most fertile land, yet more than 340 million people face hunger and over 80% of staple food is still imported. Why has a continent with so much potential struggled to feed itself, and what will it take to change that?

In this episode, we explore whether agriculture can drive Africa’s next economic transformation. Joining us are Dr Linda Davis, Founder and CEO of Giraffe Bioenergy, which is building East Africa’s first integrated cassava-to-ethanol ecosystem, and Professor David Luke, Professor in Practice and Strategic Director at the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.

Together, they unpack how innovation, trade policy, and local entrepreneurship can help Africa move from dependence to resilience, turning its farms into engines of food security, climate-smart growth, and sustainable prosperity.

Good teaching means something different to everyone, and in this episode we ask our guests what constitutes good teaching to them, how to systematise it, and how it can be scaled up.

We are delighted to be joined by two teaching experts in this episode. The first is Dr. Fay Hodza, the Global Senior Director of Programmes at PEAS (Promoting Equality in African Schools). PEAS believe that every young person should have access to a quality education which provides them with the knowledge and skills they need to lead fulfilling and successful lives after school. They support young people to succeed from the moment they start school, right through to graduation from secondary. They run one of the largest school networks in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on secondary schools. Each year, 20,000+ students learn at their 38 schools.

Alongside Fay, we have Pharo School’s own Majiwa Benson, the School Principal of Pharo School Homosha. This is our girls only, free boarding school in the remote province of Benishangul Gumuz Region, Ethiopia. Despite its remote location and the challenges that come with this, the school is one of the highest performing at regional and national level, with 100% of pupils achieving a grade above the 50% pass rate vs only 8.4% of pupils at national level, for two years in a row. Majiwa joins us to offer his thoughts on how this has been achieved and to share the teaching methods that have served him well across his career.

In this episode we continue under our ‘scaling-up’ theme and explore the work of Street Child, an organisation which supports children's safety and education in low-resource environments and emergencies across 25+ countries in Eastern Europe, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

We examine their Early Childhood Education programme in Moldova and how it was turned into a national priority. The programme was introduced after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when large numbers of Ukrainian families sought refuge in Moldova. Estimates show 1/8 children in Moldova are Ukrainian refugees. So Street Child launched an initiative to provide education to refugee learners, but they also scaled up Early Childhood Education for Moldovans, enabling many women to join the labour force. On this episode, we talk with Ramya Madhavan, Global Director of Advisory for Street Child, and Mihaela Iurascu, Coordinator of the National Program on Childcare at the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Moldova. We look at the Moldovan experience, how Street Child's Early Childhood Education programme was turned into a national priority, and how we can learn from their initiative in other contexts.

Welcome back! Season 2 of Afri-CAN is starting on the theme of what it takes to scale up good ideas in development. In this episode, we will concentrate on the policy environment and how one can create a platform which resonates with policy makers and obtain the funding that follows from that. Specifically, this episode looks at Education in the context of decreased development funding globally, and the political deprioritisation of education funding relative to other aspects of development.

To help us understand how we have gotten to this point and what can be done to remedy the situation we have three expert guests joining us: Laura Savage, the Executive Director of the International Education Funders Group, Joseph Nhan-O'Reilly, the co-founder and executive director of the International Parliamentary Network for Education, and Geoff Adlide, previously the Director of Advocacy and Communications at the Global Partnership for Education.

After a short summer break we are introducing to season 2 of Afri-CAN.

Watch this space for full episodes out soo.

Join us for the final episode of season 1 of Afri-CAN! 

At Pharo Foundation we understand the critical role savings can have and this is integral to our third mission of Productivity - part of which is to remove financial barriers to employment. Indeed, we have seen firsthand what savings can do for people in Savings Groups which we have set up for farming communities in Ethiopia.

To discuss savings in more detail we have two guests on this episode:

The first is Kenyan entrepreneur, Samuel Njuguna, the CEO and Co-Founder of Chumz - a Kenyan savings platform designed to build better financial habits using behavioural psychology and gamification to encourage its users to save.

With him, we have Wangui Kimaru, Senior Programs Manager at Emerging Leaders in Kenya. This is an organisation with a purpose of empowering youth. Wangui initially used the Chumz platform in her personal life and then approached Samuel to integrate this platform at Emerging Leaders.

 Thanks for listening to season 1 - we look forward to recording season 2!

According to the World Bank, a 1% increase in female education participation, can result in a 0.3% increase in average gross domestic product and gains of up to $15-30 trillion in lifetime productivity and earnings. In Africa specifically, we see the highest rate of female entrepreneurial activity globally, with approximately 24% of women engaged in business ventures. So, for Pharo Foundation, it is clear that educating girls is indeed an investment worth making and particularly where we work in East Africa.

We share our commitment to educating disadvantaged girls with the renowned Malala Fund - an international, non-profit organization that advocates for girls' education. To highlight the critical impact of investing in girls education, this episode explores this topic with Malala Fund's, Saba Zewdu, Manager of their Ethiopia programmatic grant portfolio and Pharo Foundation's Head of Education in Ethiopia, Milkyas Solomon.

This episode takes place in-person at Pharo Management's London Office - the emerging market hedge fund which finances Pharo Foundation. In this special episode we take a look at philanthropy from the perspective of the philanthropist - discussing how they choose their causes and how they allocate their resources.

To discuss this, we have Pharo Foundation's own founder, Guillaume Fonkenell. With him we have Jonathan Bayliss, the Co-Founder of EMpower UK, a charity which supports vulnerable young people in emerging market countries.

n estimated 250 million children in low and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their full developmental potential. Given Early Childhood Development (ECD) is one of Pharo Foundation's flagship programmes this is an important topic to us and we were keen to bring in Saving Brains experts to discuss this further.

Saving Brains invests in bold, evidence-based innovations that nurture healthy brain development and strengthen caregiving in the earliest, most critical years of life—from pregnancy to age five. To discuss this and what we can learn from their work, today we are talking with Sanjana Janardhanan, Portfolio Manager, Saving Brains at Grand Challenges Canada and Dr. Vishwajeet Kumar, Chief Scientist at Community Empowerment Lab.

This episode explores how we can optimise and increase access to healthcare through innovation, in contexts which are resource poor, such as Africa.

To discuss this, we have brought on Niek Vesteegde, a tropical doctor turned entrepreneur, and Founder and CEO of Goal 3 - a social enterprise dedicated to transforming paediatric and neonatal healthcare through scalable, sustainable and data-driven solutions that are fit for context. With him, we have Alef Meulenberg, who is the co-founder of Rhiza Babuyile and Rhiza Holdings which implement an innovative sustainable developmental model in disadvantaged African communities.

As Pharo Foundation's missions progress and we look to scale up our cost effective and evidence-based interventions, it's clear to us that utilising a range of innovative financing instruments to scale up our missions is critical. Among these instruments, outcomes-based financing is gaining traction and proving very effective. At its core, this method relies on a pre-agreed set of outcomes being achieved in order to trigger payments.

To explore how this method works, and its benefits, we have spoken with Adriana Balducci, Head of Programme Development at the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), and Chloe Edleston, Regional Lead for East Africa at Social Finance.

In a previous episode we spoke with Oxfam about how far we should go in introducing innovations that challenge local culture. In this episode, we focus on how this translates to the education that we provide to our youth. We explore how we can leverage local culture to shape our youth into unique critical thinkers.

To address this question, we are focusing on Somaliland and our guests are two respected members of the local community: Muna Ahmed Jama, Pharo Foundation's Head of Education In Somaliland, and Dr. Jama Musse Jama, the founder and organiser of the Hargeisa International Book Fair and Director of the Hargeisa Cultural Centre.