Kisawa Sanctuary was founded by Nina Flohr, a Swiss entrepreneur who also serves as the resort's creative director — leading the long-term design vision behind its patented sand-and-seawater architecture on Benguerra Island, off the coast of Mozambique.
From private aviation to a private island
Before Kisawa, Flohr held the creative director role at VistaJet, the private aviation company founded by her father, Thomas Flohr. There, she worked on the airline's cabin design and passenger experience — a background in high-end, detail-driven design that carried directly into her approach to Kisawa, her first venture into hospitality.
Kisawa itself takes its name from a word meaning "unbreakable" — a reference, in Flohr's own stated vision for the project, to the resort's intention to form durable bonds between people and place rather than simply occupy a beautiful location.
A vision built from the island itself
As founder and creative director, Flohr assembled an in-house team alongside global design experts, including her own studio, NJF, to develop Kisawa's most distinctive feature: a patented process that fuses local sand with seawater into a natural building mortar, avoiding the need to ship conventional cement across the channel from mainland Mozambique. The result is architecture that reads as grown from Benguerra Island's dunes rather than built on top of them — a design philosophy Flohr has described as using design as a tool for cultural and environmental integration, not simply a style choice.
Beyond the resort: the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies
Flohr's commitment to the region extends past hospitality. Adjacent to Kisawa, she also founded the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies, a nonprofit marine research facility operating within the Bazaruto Archipelago National Marine Park — the same protected waters Kisawa's guests dive and snorkel in. The centre positions ongoing marine research as a permanent neighbour to the resort, rather than a one-off environmental gesture attached to its opening.
A name now known by another title, too
Since marrying Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark, Flohr is also known as Princess Nina of Greece and Denmark. Worth noting for anyone encountering her name both ways: Kisawa Sanctuary and the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies were both her own projects, built as Nina Flohr the entrepreneur, independent of that title.
Kisawa Sanctuary forms the Mozambique leg of Elementa Africa's Salt & Culture journey, paired with Nosy Ankao in Madagascar by a single private flight.