Afrocentric Climate Culture

Cape Town youth face high unemployment, low service delivery and challenges of poverty and violence and so often, have little opportunity to relate to the need for urgent climate action. Additionally, the language of climate change is often exclusionary, disconnected to the global south and coupled to the view of the crisis being a “white environmental issue”.

Talking about rising sea levels seems disconnected from youth in an informal settlement, facing socio-economic challenges. Reframing climate information and incorporating indigenous knowledges, local researchers, and African experts in making information applicable and relevant is important to inspire urgent action.

The main aim of this project, therefore, is to engage with youth to co-create Afrocentric climate knowledge in order to ensure that the knowledge, the way it is presented, and the language is inclusive of indigenous learnings, relevant and applicable in the South African context.

The group of young people a part of ACC (Afrocentric Climate Culture) have begun to focus on two specific areas: 

• Adaptation and Resilience 
• Historical and Contemporary sustainable development 

Afrocentric Climate Culture forms part of an international project under The Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures network. This network is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund through the Economic and Social Research Council Network Plus scheme

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