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Robbie Brozin spent decades helping build Nando’s from a small Johannesburg chicken shop into one of South Africa’s most recognizable global brands. Today, he is applying a similar instinct to a harder challenge, helping mobilize people, companies and civic groups around Jozi My Jozi, a movement focused on restoring confidence in Johannesburg and improving the city one project at a time.
Jozi My Jozi is not a standard charity campaign and it is not a branding exercise. It sits at the intersection of capital, civic leadership and urban resilience, with founding partners and supporters from major parts of South African business standing alongside citizens who want visible change in a city that remains central to commerce, finance and culture in the region.
Brozin’s presence gives the movement unusual weight. He is not only a well known entrepreneur. He is a founder who understands how to create momentum, shape identity and keep people aligned around a story that feels practical enough to act on and ambitious enough to believe in. That combination is a large part of why Jozi My Jozi has attracted attention far beyond local neighborhood activism.
From Middelburg to Nando’s, and the making of a brand builder
Brozin’s path to city activism began long before Nando’s. In a Harvard Business School oral history interview, he says he was born in 1959 in Middelburg and moved to Johannesburg with his family at age 12, later studying commerce and spending time in auditing before realizing he was not suited to that world. He also speaks candidly about leaving corporate structures that felt constraining and drifting toward entrepreneurship.
That frustration with rigid systems became one of the defining themes of his career. In the same interview, Brozin recalls meeting future partner Fernando Duarte while both were connected to Teltron, the family business, and going out for lunch at a small Portuguese café that would change everything. The shop was then called Chickenland. Brozin says he immediately saw an opportunity in Portuguese style chicken and told Duarte that nobody had taken it to the world.
What followed has become part of South African business folklore, but the details still matter. Brozin says he and Duarte bought a majority stake in the business, initially with the idea that it might be a passive investment. Instead, he found himself loving the restaurant environment, the directness of serving people and the energy of building something tangible. He has said that was the turning point, when the project stopped being a small investment and became a calling.
The deeper lesson he drew from those early years was not only about food. It was about ownership of the brand itself. In the Harvard interview, Brozin explains that he wanted to build a brand whose personality and direction they could control, rather than remain dependent on someone else’s imported brand logic. That idea of being the masters of their own destiny became a recurring principle in his business life.
Nando’s then scaled into an international business, with public profiles and event material citing well over a thousand restaurants across multiple countries. The company became known not just for peri peri chicken, but for a distinct voice, bold marketing and a strong South African identity that travelled well. Brozin’s own reflections also show how culture and creativity became part of the operating model, including the use of South African art in restaurants around the world.
Why Jozi My Jozi fits Brozin’s worldview
To understand why Brozin is investing his time and reputation in Jozi My Jozi, it helps to understand the pattern in his work after stepping back from day to day management at Nando’s. Public profiles link him to social impact efforts such as Goodbye Malaria, and his own comments in the HBS interview show a consistent belief in African solutions built from the inside out, with local ownership of the mission and the brand.
That same logic is visible in Jozi My Jozi. The movement is built around the idea that Johannesburg’s recovery cannot be left to one institution. Jozi My Jozi is a civic coalition that aims to connect and empower people across sectors to support sustainable inner city solutions, strengthen communities and build a safer, more vibrant city. Its language is practical, collaborative and action oriented, which mirrors Brozin’s long standing preference for doing, not waiting.
The movement also reflects another theme Brozin has articulated publicly, the role of creativity in solving difficult problems. In the HBS interview, he argues that creatives are the people who change the world and says business has not spoken loudly enough in South Africa’s current moment. That is not a narrow comment about advertising. It is a broader view that imagination, design and culture are essential tools in rebuilding systems people have lost faith in.
Johannesburg is exactly the kind of place where that worldview is being tested. The city is powerful and productive, but it is also burdened by uneven service delivery, infrastructure breakdowns in some areas and a deep trust deficit between residents, institutions and investors. Brozin appears to be betting that one way back is to create enough visible wins that confidence starts to return, and that citizens, business leaders and local communities begin to act like co owners of the city’s future. This is a brand builder’s approach to urban renewal, but with cleaner streets, safer routes and activated public spaces in place of product launches.
What Jozi My Jozi is trying to do, and why business is watching
Jozi My Jozi is more than a slogan. The movement’s website presents it as a catalyst for change, a super connector and a call to action, with an emphasis on bringing together private sector players, public sector stakeholders and ordinary residents. It also frames itself around constitutional values and civic pride, which is part of what gives it a broader social tone than a conventional urban clean up campaign.
The operating model is intentionally project based. Jozi My Jozi highlights initiatives tied to inner city gateways, lighting and community participation, alongside event activations and campaigns that encourage people to contribute time, energy and money. The platform also spotlights partnerships and practical opportunities to join projects, which is a familiar playbook for anyone who has watched how successful consumer brands build communities around participation.
Business is paying attention because Johannesburg is too important to ignore. It remains the nerve center for a large share of South Africa’s corporate activity, financial services, professional services and dealmaking. When parts of the city deteriorate, the cost is not only aesthetic. It affects investment sentiment, operating costs, talent attraction and the daily experience of doing business. A credible civic movement that can improve trust and execution, even incrementally, becomes relevant to balance sheets as well as neighborhoods.
Brozin’s contribution, at least from the outside, appears to be less about positioning himself as a politician and more about using influence, networks and a founder mentality to push coordinated action. That may be the most interesting part of this story. Jozi My Jozi is an example of what happens when an entrepreneur who once built a global consumer brand turns his attention to a city and asks whether the same ingredients that build loyalty in business can help rebuild belief in a place.
No one serious about Johannesburg thinks a movement can solve everything on its own. The city’s structural problems are too large and too layered. What Jozi My Jozi does offer is a different proposition, that visible progress can be organized, that civic pride can be reactivated and that private sector leadership can be useful without trying to replace government. In a city that has heard many speeches, that focus on proof may be exactly why Robbie Brozin’s latest project is being watched so closely.
