About Us

Our History

We are a team dedicated to building a community that brings together consumers, businesses and other like-minded citizens and organisations to accelerate sustainable consumerism in Africa.

2023

2024

2025

2023 : Planting the Seeds

Sustainable Africa began with a simple but powerful question: how can everyday choices contribute to a more sustainable, fair, and circular economy in Africa? Throughout 2023, co-founders Luke Hayman and Isabelle Pelly, living in Kenya and eager to make more informed, sustainability driven decisions, began speaking with consumers, small businesses, sustainability practitioners, and community organisations to understand what sustainability means in a Kenyan context.

In April 2023, Isabelle teamed up with Susan Njoroge of Responsible Business Consulting to co-host Sustainable Kenya's first informal gathering. The event explored how consumers think about sustainability and what information they need to make better choices. The conversations that followed revealed a clear gap in accessible, localised sustainability guidance and planted the early foundations of what would soon become Sustainable Africa.

2024 : Building Community and Formalising the Vision

In 2024, Isabelle continued a wide ranging consultation process, engaging entrepreneurs, sector associations, sustainability experts, and development partners. These discussions helped shape the idea of a platform that brings businesses and consumers together around meaningful, context appropriate sustainability action.

Later that year, Sustainable Kenya formally registered as a non profit entity, giving the initiative a clearer identity and governance structure. The first business was signed onto the sustainability directory, demonstrating early proof of concept and validating demand for an approach grounded in local realities rather than imported frameworks.

We began to gain visibility, including an invitation to speak at the inaugural Sustainability Connect Summit in late 2024. These platforms helped articulate a growing ambition: making sustainability practical, accessible, and relevant for Africa's small businesses and emerging green economy.

2025 : Scaling with Technology and Expanding Beyond Kenya

At the start of 2025, co-founder Luke Hayman took on the lead role in shaping the next phase of Sustainable Africa's growth. Drawing on his background in innovation and digital systems, Luke introduced the development of an AI powered sustainability platform designed to help small businesses measure, improve, and communicate their sustainability performance with far greater ease and at scale.

The organisation also evolved structurally. In addition to the non profit, a complementary for profit arm was established to support technology development, commercial partnerships, and long term sustainability of the platform. This allowed Sustainable Africa to pursue blended revenue models and reduce dependency on traditional grants while maintaining a strong mission focus.

Sustainable Africa's thought leadership continued to grow, with invitations to speak at the annual ESG Awards in early 2025, the B Lab Africa Summit in October 2025, and other ecosystem events. The organisation was featured in the Kempton Post, on the South African Broadcasting Corporation Radio, and on The Sustainability Journey podcast, expanding its reach across the continent.

By late 2025, the organisation had begun exploring partnerships and pilot opportunities beyond Kenya, building the foundations for a truly pan African sustainability movement.