Throwback: Young Activists From Africans Rising Charge For United Action Against The Climate Crisis At Africa Climate Week.

March 2019

The Africa Climate Week has come and gone, but it has indeed helped advance the discourse and drive towards the actualization of a just climate future and the SDGs all together, especially in Africa. Being the first of three annual regional climate events to be organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) this year, the Africa Climate Week was hosted by the government of Ghana between 18th and22nd March, 2019. The collective goal of these Regional Climate Weeks is to support the implementation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and climate action to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In so doing, they bring together a diverse array of international stakeholders in the public and private sectors around the common goal of enhancing climate action.
One of the main highlights of the week was the Pitch Hub session of the Africans Rising Movement – represented at the event by two of its young activists, Mark Lekan Lalude and Gideon Adeyeni – which focused on espousing walkable pathways for CSOs and environmental activists in the bid to organize people for climate action – since ‘theirs is a critical role for the actualization of a just climate future and the SDGs all together’

It was a sweltering afternoon, and the temperature of the day seemed to show how significant the event was in the light of earlier extreme temperature levels. The people who had come for the conference from many countries, mostly United Nations officials, national policy-makers, young people from different organizations, and environmental activists, milled around the air-conditioned foyer of the Accra International Conference Center. It had earlier been mentioned that some of the delegates and officials of the UN, who were supposed to be part of the event had died in the Ethiopian air crash, and a minute silence was observed in their honor at the high level opening of the event.

Speaking during the session, an emotionally charged Gideon Adeyeni, who is a coordinating collective member of the movement, addressed the issue of climate justice from a people-centered approach, emphasizing the need to organize the people to take action which can in turn put pressure on business and political leaders to pay attention to meeting the 1.50C temperature goal, emission reduction, and the SDGs all together. Linking the frustration, dejection and constant violence that characterize existence in many parts of the continent to the lack of sufficient commitment on the part of the continent’s political and business leaders to the fulfillment of the peoples environmental, political, cultural and economic rights, he mentioned that the inaction of African leaders to actively engage issues related to climate change was one major factor involved in the alarming rate of failed African migration across the Mediterranean which has many times ended in unfortunate disasters.

A central point made during the session is the need for activists and CSOs to unite beyond the “arbitrary borders inherited from the colonial past” and building momentum around the vision of a truly pan-African solidarity shared by the great pan-africanists who gathered at Addis Ababa in 1953 to form the Organization for African Unity (OAU) to advance the liberation of all of the peoples of the continent, so as to be able to successfully fulfill this task, while pressing for greater united actions from the leaders too. Effectively organizing the people, for the young activists, would inevitably require that activists and CSOs learn to employ methods that appeal, materials that engage and articulations that compel the common people to take action.

While critics may yet prepare to accuse the enthusiastic young activists of exaggerating the dangers, for the manner with which they speak of the urgency of the hour, and the need to attend to the climate crisis “now”, three of the continent’s southern countries were struck by what, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), might be the southern hemisphere’s worst disaster – Cyclone Idai – which is linked to the climate crisis. Undeniably, the young activists are right, the hour is late!

It would be recalled that it was in 2016, 23rd and 24th of August, that two hundred and seventy two representatives from civil society, trade unions, women, young people, men, people living with disabilities, parliamentarians, media organizations and faith-based groups, the citizens and descendants of Africa, from across Africa and the African diaspora, outraged by the centuries of oppression, the plunder of the continent’s resources and the suppression of Africans’
fundamental human rights, gathered in Arusha, Tanzania and committed to build a pan-African movement that recognizes the rights and freedoms of all of the African people. The gathering committed itself to “expanding space for civic and political action; fighting for women’s rights and freedoms across society; focusing our struggles on the right to Equity and Dignity ; demanding good governance as we fight corruption and impunity, and; demanding climate and environmental justice.

All of these commitments were put together into a historical document known as the Kilimanjaro Declaration, which is the founding charter of the Africans Rising movement. The gathering then carefully selected the 25th May, 2017 as the launch date for the new movement, to deepen the meaning of African Liberation Day, on which day the OAU was formed fifty four years earlier. The day had since become the peak organizing moment for the movement annually, and the young activists did not hesitate to use the opportunity of the session to invite “all the lovers of Africa” to sign up on www.africans-rising.org to join hands – together with him and his brothers and sisters in the Africans Rising movement - to deepen the meaning of this day and walk with them to build an African society with inclusive democracy and shared prosperity.