Richard "Kiki" Fernandes is a third-generation Kenyan, born in 1962, and co-founder of Marginpar. Marginpar grows summer flowers in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe and employs some 5,500 people.

In the nineties Kiki and his father grew vegetables on the slopes of Mount Kenya, packed at source for UK supermarkets, before the internet and before mobile phones. When the margin disappeared from vegetables, everyone around him went into roses. Kiki didn't. At his cousin's wedding in Harare he met Bart Koning, the founder of Marginpar, who was looking for growers on the equator. Kenya had what Eryngium and Hypericum need: summer all year round, and altitude to keep it cool. With Rob Koning he built Marginpar from there. Rob ran sales and marketing from the Netherlands, Kiki ran production in Africa.

He has handed over the CEO role and now puts his energy into boards: the Floriculture Sustainability Initiative, the Agricultural Sector Network in Kenya, the supervisory board of Royal FloraHolland as its first non-Dutch-speaking member, and until the end of this year the Kenya Flower Council, which he chaired.

We talk about what a flower farm does to a rural area, down to the day a new pedestrian gate moved a whole row of shops. About not letting anyone go during Covid. About Hamuka, Marginpar's own name for Kaizen. About why air freight out of Addis is so much cheaper than out of Nairobi. About pesticides as "a journey with no end." And about what Kiki sees as the sector's biggest weakness: no collective voice.

This episode is in English.