Born in Burundi to parents from Samos, Kostas Koukoulis lived in Greece for only four years, the duration of his studies. A nature-loving entrepreneur, he launched the luxurious Saadani resort along the Indian Ocean coastline, offering visitors the challenge of a unique safari experience in the local national park—one of the planet’s most significant and, unfortunately, dwindling ecosystems. However, just 1.5 kilometers away, the local population was suffering.
The majority of the Swahili people, mostly fishermen, relied solely on shrimp for income and were unable to cultivate crops. Using his personal funds and contributions from visitors through the non-profit organization SANA (Saving Africa’s Nature), which he founded, Mr. Koukoulis established a clinic, repaired the school, and constructed a wind-powered well.
Mr. Koukoulis, who is completing a second visitor camp for photographic safaris with profits dedicated exclusively to the village residents, remarks:
We do important work here for the people. I devote all my free time to this cause. It’s a sacrifice, but I’ve decided that my life’s purpose is to support those in need of my help.
The philanthropic entrepreneur is also experimenting with producing eco-friendly charcoal from harvested corn residues. As he points out, he does not ask volunteers for money—only clothes and medicine.
The Story of Kostas Koukoulis
“Everything was going well until the year the civil war broke out between the two tribes, the Hutus and the Tutsis. The cause of the conflict can be attributed to the planet’s political and economic conditions, but things escalated to the point where even siblings from the same family were fighting each other. That affected me profoundly. We lost many people during the civil war. As a lover of Mother Nature, I saw not only the unjust loss of human lives but also the destruction of nature,” says the man whose Tanzanian and Greek friends call him an “Afro-Greek.” If you seek him today, you’ll find him where his soul finds peace—in the place “where the savannah meets the coast,” as he describes it.
To those who know him, he is neither solely African nor solely Greek. He is a global citizen who has lived through historical moments that filled the people of Africa with pain. Simultaneously, he is a man who deeply cares for the African land and takes action to protect it. For the past 20 years, he has left behind the burdens of his youth and become the pillar of the initiative called “Saving Africa’s Nature” (SANA in Tanzania).
Surviving and Escaping a Genocide
In the summer of 1994, people around the world watched in shock as events unfolded in Burundi and Rwanda during one of the 20th century’s largest genocides. The massacres in this region of Central Africa claimed over 300,000 lives in Burundi alone, while neighboring Rwanda lost 800,000 people in just a few months. It was during the early 1990s that Mr. Koukoulis decided to leave it all behind and “escape.”
“The civil war was the reason I took my first trip in 1994 and decided to visit Tanzania. I had heard about the Serengeti, often called the ‘Parthenon of Nature.’ For me, it was like a dream to know that such places existed on Earth. After Tanzania, I went to Kenya and Uganda, but I loved Tanzania so much that I returned almost every year until 1999,” Mr. Koukoulis recalls, describing his turn toward a new life of activism and action.
Settling in Saadani and the Fight Against Nature’s Destruction
The next chapter in Mr. Koukoulis’s life began in 2001, a turning point shaped by the years of devastation he had witnessed. That year, the Greek from Burundi permanently “escaped” the massacres and decided to settle in Saadani. Around that time, an initiative began to take shape, aiming to improve community living conditions and protect the region from potentially irreversible environmental destruction while ensuring a basic standard of living for locals.
He explains that he doesn’t want residents to live in poverty, “drinking water from puddles” just to preserve the natural environment. SANA in Tanzania is an effort to find a balance between human life and nature. This philosophy drives the Greek Tanzanian’s actions, focusing not only on ecological ideals and preserving natural resources.
“It wasn’t easy. Locals were initially skeptical, questioning our efforts: ‘What are these people doing? What do they want from us?’ It took some time, but eventually, we were accepted, and we achieved what we did—even with the help of visitors to Saadani. Today, we are also in Congo, another village outside Saadani, which finally became a National Park in 2005. One could say that nature has been saved there,” recounts the Greek enthusiast of Africa’s unique Serengeti Park.
“Money Can’t Buy Love, Health, or Joy”
Is it possible for an initiative like this to succeed when poverty is widespread, and challenges seem insurmountable? “In Tanzania, over the past five or six years, we’ve lost about 60-70% of the elephant population due to ivory poaching and population growth. Similarly, lion populations have declined by over 50-60% in the past 50 years. We believe something must be done to bridge the gap between humans and nature,” says Mr. Koukoulis, describing some of the ongoing issues in the country he holds dear.
The Greek protector of the “Parthenon of Nature” appears to have found the ideal “key” to unlocking prosperity for people. It’s not money, he says, emphasizing his goal of mobilizing those who care to take action—not just offer financial contributions to SANA in Tanzania: “We need money, but you can’t buy love, health, or happiness with money.”