September 16 2025 16:20
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM
Hello there! Our latest episode of Another Brick in the Wall has been released and is available at iono.fm:
and on Spotify :
Our guest in this episode is James Arnott, a property developer and professional who is passionate about conservation. He is the co-founder of both Rewilding Africa CIC and African Conservancies.
He and wildlife conservationist, consultant and author, Grant Fowlds, cofounded Rewilding Africa, a group launched in April 2022. The company is named after Fowlds’ book. Arnott is trying to create a commercial model which can be promulgated across Africa’s conservancies. A conservancy is a protected area. It is a clearly defined geographic space which is recognised, dedicated, and manged through legal and or other means to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values.
Helping to develop conservancies and enhancing them such that the communities living in them can earn revenues through trades and businesses is critical for the future of the continent.
Rewilding Africa takes conservancies which often lie next to parks. They propose that properties would be built on these conservancies, and they can then house businesses. These businesses would hire local community members and generate revenue for the communities, helping to lift them out of poverty.
Michael and Alistair learn how currently, too often, impoverished and largely uneducated communities end up exhausting the flora and fauna around them. They don’t have the skills and equipment to farm sustainably. This changes when they earn revenues from community businesses supported by the private sector.
“We want multiple land use and multiple revenue conservancies. Each conservancy would first have
informal and then formal businesses running on it. We would also create concessions, service the
land and manage it,” says Arnott.
Rewilding Africa (RA) is responsible for marketing and creating awareness around the conservancies.
Then RA has also set up African Conservancies, a company which is a specialist community
conservancy developer and implementation partner. African Conservancies projects are in desperate
need of funding, especially from large financial institutions and individuals with long-term
sustainability goals in mind as opposed ego promotion.
Arnott is on a mission to acquire funding long-term projects which help conservancies across the continent to thrive.
Enjoy the episode!
Another Brick in the Wall is sponsored by Liberty Two Degrees (L2D), a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) and a division of Standard Bank Group in South Africa.
alistair@propertyflash.co.za
