Africa, climate and education
A webinar series
Environmentalism in Africa is often discussed through external frameworks that do not fully capture the continent’s lived realities, philosophies or ecological histories.
African ways of knowing offer rich, process-based understandings of the environment, seeing land, soil, community and spirit as deeply interconnected.
Yet, these perspectives remain under-represented in global environmental education, funding and research agendas.
‘Africa, climate and education’ is a webinar series working to address this gap.
It seeks to create a dedicated, Africa-centred space to rethink what African environmentalism is and looks like in higher education, its philosophical foundations, its practical expressions and its potential to inform global ecological thought.
This series is not just about knowledge exchange, but about reframing environmentalism through African epistemologies and positioning African scholars and practitioners as central to the redefinition of global sustainability thinking.
The episodes:
Launch
African environmentalism: Defining the field
The series officially launched at the Jena Declaration Conference, posing the following question “What does African environmentalism look like?”
This opening conversation set the intellectual and policy context for the series, highlighting the need for an African-led redefinition of environmental thought and practice.
Focus:
- Framing African environmentalism as a living, relational worldview.
- Introducing the three upcoming clusters and inviting participation.
- Positioning the series as a platform for long-term transformation in African environmental education and policy.
Cluster 1: Philosophical foundations of African environmentalism
Date and location: announced soon
We’ll explore the philosophical, ethical and relational roots of African environmental thought, some example topic: Earthly humanity, historical and geological processes, African relationality, and beyond nature-culture.
Together with academics and philosophers, we’ll examine how African worldviews reimagine humanity’s relationship with land, life and spirit.
Cluster 2: African environmentalism of soil & AMCEN SHIELD
Date and location: to be announced soon
We’ll explore African environmentalism by centring soil as both substance and metaphor. Despite accelerating global degradation, soil science is being defunded, threatening Africa’s food security, ecosystems and indigenous knowledge.
Soil is a living archive of history, culture and ecology, yet modern institutions reduce it to an industrial resource. This webinar episode seeks to restore soil’s ecological, cultural and ethical significance by linking traditional knowledge with modern science and by placing soil within broader struggles for land justice and environmental sovereignty in Africa.
Cluster 3: Ubuntu and Datong — Africa–China dialogues on environmental ethics
Date and location: to be announced soon
The final cluster will bring African and Chinese scholars together to explore the intersections between Ubuntu (an African philosophy of relationality and community) and Datong (a Chinese concept of great harmony and universal unity). Both traditions, though emerging from different historical and cultural contexts, share a profound concern for balance between humans and nature, the individual and the collective and material progress and moral responsibility.