I started Baotree in 2019 as a solo entrepreneur passionate about a problem on my home continent. I never thought the journey would go as it has, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Baotree was born to tackle the challenge of human-wildlife coexistence in Africa, recognising the need for sustainable conservation funding and measurable impact tracking. Our initial focus was supporting conservation organizations, mainly those dependent on tourism revenue to finance their operations.
However, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down global tourism, conservation funding plummeted, and many of these organisations had to reprioritise their survival strategies. This crisis revealed a critical need for broader, more adaptable impact measurement solutions that could support conservation and extend into regenerative agriculture, water security, and foundation-driven social initiatives.
Over the last five years, Baotree has iterated, adapted, and refined our platform to find the right product-market fit. Through extensive engagement with conservation groups, tourism operators, and globally community-driven initiatives, we identified a significant gap in sustainability tracking within the tourism sector—lodges, camps, and hotels lacked efficient, transparent, and verifiable systems to measure, report, and improve their sustainability performance.
This realisation led us to pivot and focus intensely on sustainable tourism, where Baotree is now providing a much-needed solution to help the sector track its impact, build resilience, and drive meaningful change. Today, we are actively partnering with leading tourism brands and conservation-focused hospitality businesses, positioning ourselves as the go-to platform for sustainability measurement in the tourism sector.
While other sustainability platforms focus on corporate-level compliance, Baotree bridges the gap between on-the-ground impact measurement and high-level sustainability reporting. By making data collection inclusive, verifiable, and action-oriented, Baotree is the only platform that makes sustainability measurable and transparent for the tourism and conservation sectors.
This pivot has strengthened our mission, allowing us to create a tangible, scalable impact while reinforcing the vital link between tourism, conservation, and community development.
It feels like the journey has just begun; after five years of adaptation and grit, we keep learning and growing with an optimistic spirit.
