Podcast #34 · Justine Braby · Keeping Your Cup Full & Africa’s Wellbeing Economy

“Justine is the Director of Progress Namibia Technical and Advisory Services. Her academic qualifications include natural science, law, and education. She has most recently been working on the broad framework of sustainable development, including system thinking and economic transformation. Justine has extensive experience working on themes that are interconnected, such as climate change, sustainable land management, poverty eradication, among others. She has a large portfolio of work supporting African governments in their sustainable development planning, and has recently been working closely with the Sustainable Development Goals. Justine leads the Secretarial work of the WE-Africa (Wellbeing Economy Africa Research and Action Network), and is a member of the core research group of the WE-All (Wellbeing Economy Alliance).

Justine has published widely on themes from economic transformation, alternative measures of economic wellbeing, as well as climate change, global transformation, and ecology. She has also had extensive experience in developing, implementing and evaluating different projects and strategies all over Africa, including for various UN and bilateral agencies, governments, and business. Justine’s biggest passion is the redefining of value systems towards a more equitable world.”

After 10 days of traveling Namibia (one of our absolute all-time favourite trips), we visited Justine in Windhoek, who kindly hosted us in her home. We covered the following:

• Justine’s background, growing up on the Skeleton Coast Park of Namibia while her parents did conservation work (~01:45)
• Justine’s thoughts on our connection to nature and the broader concept of nature (~06:00)
• Justine’s career pathway from her diverse studies to founding social enterprise, Progress Namibia, including thoughts on how systems thinking influenced her (~08:15)
• An introduction to Progress Namibia (~11:00)
• Justine’s experience of chronic illness from burnout in the lonely sustainability space and how she got better from self-care, re-evaluating her priorities and surfing in Central America (~11:30)
• More about Progress Namibia, the core mission, what it does and examples of their work (~15:10)
• Alternatives to GDP for measuring improved human quality of life and how Progress Namibia is involved in using these alternatives to make real world change (~18:00)
• Sustainable Development Goals Games Series to help educate Namibians on the SDGs (~20:10)
• The Wellbeing Economy Research and Action Network for Africa: What it is and how it can work to change lives using the mantra “People, Planet, Prosperity” (~25:35)
• The problem with focusing on growth instead of wellbeing and what it’s going to take to drive global change (~27:40)
• Movements/innovations/people Justine is inspired by (~35:20)
• What’s next for the Progress Namibia team (~41:00)
• Justine’s message to the those wanting to have a positive impact on the world (~44:00)
• How to be an ethical/sustainable traveller to Namibia and anywhere (~45:50)