On the Couch - #119 - MEX in conversation with Kevin Leo-Smith

We spoke to Kevin Leo-Smith on Thurs, 22 February 2024 at 9pm on Cape Talk's, The Business of Entertainment.

Now in its 10th month, the Business of Entertainment on Cape Talk, hosted by Martin Myers every Thursday at 9 pm, has landed a real coup with this exclusive one-on-one.

Kevin Leo-Smith has extensive experience in developing and growing conservation-based tourism projects.

He is the co-founder and partner of Safari Investments Advisory and a non-executive director of immedia, a South African cloud-computing platform.

In the late 1980s, he conceived of the idea behind Phinda Game Reserve, achieving the then biggest private conversion of land use from agriculture to conservation in South Africa at that time, and formed its parent company Conservation Corporation Africa with Alan Bernstein and others, where he was responsible for development and operations until 1996.

In 1997, Kevin established Kwando Safaris from scratch with a partner, constructing 5 luxury camps in Botswana’s Okavango region on over 400,000 hectares of private concession.

In 2006, he co-founded SFM Africa (now African Conservation Development Group) with Alan Bernstein, creating and operating projects in Gabon, Guinea and Rwanda. Most of the projects had a safari tourism component as well as forestry and agriculture.