“Sustainability to future-proof businesses, create long-term resilience and have a positive impact on the planet’s nature and people”

At the recent Enlit Africa in Cape Town, VUKA Group’s Green Economy Portfolio met up for an exclusive interview with Darshana Myronidis, a global sustainability leader and keynote speaker at the conference.

Interview Summary:

Sustainability leader Darshana Myronidis reflects on her career and vision for Africa’s future. She emphasises that sustainability must be embedded as a mindset across organisations, shaping operations, branding and communication. Drawing on two decades of experience across sectors, she highlights the importance of innovation and resilience to future‑proof businesses. She stresses that energy and water security are inseparable, requiring systemic collaboration between governments, policy makers and international organisations. For Africa, she urges protection of resources, regional cooperation and female leadership to drive trust, solutions and long‑term positive impact on people and nature.

Thank you for joining us. Let’s start with some background on you and how your focus on sustainability developed.

I’m South African by birth, I grew up in Durban. The developing country context of sustainability is a very real problem on a day-to-day basis. And so growing up and looking at what the world currently needs gave me more of an ethical lens and almost like a movement to want to actually do something about it. 

Can you give us some examples of sustainability projects that you worked on where you saw a real difference and how they differed in terms of companies and sectors that you worked in?

I’ve been in sustainability for over 20 years, so it did differ. I started off in oil and gas, I’ve done FMCG, I’ve worked for large portfolio companies. The most exciting projects were ones where innovation and sustainability worked hand in hand to actually try to move the dial on what needs to happen. 

And it’s dependent on the sector of where innovation comes to the fore. But what’s happening with sustainability today is the fact that everybody actually needs to innovate and have some sort of research and development built in so that they start to build resilience and start to future proof their businesses.

So it’s a kind of mindset that needs to be in a company or an organisation?

Yes, it’s a mindset that needs to be in a company or organisation that should filter through to everything, from operations into brand, into how we actually communicate about a business.

What are the challenges in establishing sustainable practices?

The sustainability professionals have such a huge systemic lens on how they look at the problem statements. They’re very much solutionists in how they attack problems and issues around the world and try what they’re trying to solve. So the challenges there are taking everybody on the journey with you. So, making it really practical for everyone, making it sort of relatable and simplifying not only our messaging, but the projects itself so that it’s something that becomes everybody’s everyday action.

We’re at an energy conference. How important is sustainability in the energy sector and what are the main challenges there? 

You’ll know at the moment, with all of the geopolitical risks, that sustainability and energy go hand in hand. And for me, if those businesses had transitioned to renewable energy earlier on would be in a much better space right now given all of the global conflict. The reality is that you can’t solve for climate change or even nature–based solutions without trying to get our energy usage right and moving away from fossil–based fuels.

So the reality is that that is the one focus point you’d need to address first . 

What sessions are you part of here at Enlit Africa?

I am on the Water Security Africa panel. 

What is your message there?

My message is, energy and water go hand in hand in terms of how to actually solve for long-term adaptation and mitigation. The reality is, water is a finite resource, and therefore, we need to start planning in a way that means that we are not working in silos but from a systems approach. 

We need government, we need policy, we need international organisations to come together to actually solve these issues in a holistic way. 

What is your vision for sustainability on the continent?

Africa is at a point in time where about 80% of the population is going to be in the Global South by 2030. And it’s such an opportunity, right? 

I also think that we’re rich in resources and minerals that we normally give away quite freely to the Global North. And for the continent right now, it’s almost a case of being really clever about how you protect your own resources, what you need to get right and actually start working and with each other in a more meaningful way to find solutions because the solutions are here in Africa. It’s almost like we get distracted by everybody else. 

What is your opinion on having a female kind of lens on sustainability?

I have an opinion on so many things (laughs). Women are community builders, and that’s what I find with other chief sustainability officers I work with. We work together really closely. We share information and we share solutions. And that is what sustainability needs more of, right? So more trust, less barriers and females are really good at that; besides the fact that we’re multitaskers and naturally solutions driven. 

So that there’s this moment in time as well where sustainability, I suppose, given the global political issues around the world, is taking a tiny little bit of a dip in terms of its importance. But the reality is it’s not going anywhere because we’re here to actually solve for something long-term.

We’re here to future–proof businesses, create long–term resilience and have a positive impact on the planet’s nature and people.

Any final thoughts from your side?

 We can just do more. We always come together and we talk to each other in a meaningful way, but there’s always an opportunity to do more and think about the entire system we’re in. Think about how to change the system because if we continue with the status quo, we’re not going to get there by 2030 or 2050