[2017], Paolo Savaget [2015] and Uche Ogechukwu [2024] talk about everything from inclusive innovation, the need for self-sustaining models rather than aid and how to build a sustainable clean energy model for Africa to the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to problems and the need to think unconventionally and find resourceful ways of addressing the world’s most pressing challenges.

The episode, recorded face to face at Cambridge’s West Hub media lab, is the fifth in the second series of the podcast. Uche spoke about the importance of creating an enabling environment and reaching people who are prepared to back potential. In part that is why he co-founded the Hardware Garage in Nigeria that helps start-ups develop and why he hosts the African Founders Programme at Cambridge.

Sandile talked about the need for allyship for sustainable development. She said co-creation of solutions to problems is vital and gave as an example the importance of including women and girls in discussions of solutions to energy poverty. How can solutions address the day-to-day challenges they face?

Paolo spoke about how workarounds can lead to useful innovation on the ground when there are few resources. He discussed one example from his book, The Four Workarounds, involving Cola Life. It was based on a research project in Zambia which looked at improving distribution networks for diarrhoea medicines in remote areas. It involved piggybacking on the distribution networks of Coca Cola, which has no problem getting into rural areas. As part of the project, medicines were initially designed to fit in between Coke bottles. Then the project mapped the value chain for fast-moving consumer goods to the value chain for diarrhoea treatment. The project increased access to the medication significantly.

Sandile Mtetwa is a scientist and researcher currently serving as the Kenya Partnerships Lead at the Centre of Global Equality, University of Cambridge, under the UK FCDO-funded Climate Compatible Growth Programme. In this role, she supports the development of sustainable energy and transport solutions, enables equitable partnerships across low- and middle-income countries in the Global South, and strengthens the link between research and policy. She is also a fellow of the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, where her work focuses on advancing inclusive, locally led approaches to energy and climate futures, with particular attention to marginalised communities in Zimbabwe’

Impact Prize winner Uche Ogechukwu is a co-founder and chief business officer of Greenage Technologies, a clean technology start-up in Nigeria on a mission to help 30 million Nigerians connect to clean energy. The start-up leverages local technologies and human capital to manufacture, scale and connect users to solar energy through home solar installations, energy distribution kits and more. Uche is also a co-founder of Hardware Garage supporting young Africans to build their start-ups in clean tech and E-mobility.  He is currently an MPhil Technology Policy student at the Judge Business school and hosts the African Founders Webinar Series at E-Lab.

Paulo Savaget holds a joint appointment between the Department of Engineering Science and Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His primary fields of expertise are entrepreneurship, sustainable development, systems change and innovation management. The emphasis of his work is on transforming unjust and unsustainable systems through entrepreneurship. Paolo is the author of the award-winning book ‘The Four Workarounds: Strategies from the World’s Scrappiest Organisations for Tackling Complex Problems’.

Next month’s podcast is on what makes for a good leader in today’s turbulent times and features Julie Pham [2001], Robyn Scott [2004] and Chris Tooley [2002]. It will go live on the last Tuesday of June.

Listen to the new episode here.