66th Annual Meeting African Presences: Envisioning Africa in Text and Deed
San Francisco, CA | 30 November-December 2, 2023
Vested interests and weak political will have been identified as some of the most significant challenges to implementing the Paris Agreement among African political leaders. Seventy per cent of sub-Saharan Africans are under 30; such a high number of young people could be the game changer for the continent’s economic, political growth, and social-ecological transformation. The global “Fridays For Future” movement is becoming a reality in Africa. Recently, new and unprecedented youth-led actions have been triggered across Africa, putting pressure on the old political class to seek an alliance with the passionate youth-led movements across the continent. Several African youth organizations have emerged to raise awareness, advocate, and make policies that impact politics; examples of such organizations are the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC), the African Youth Climate Hub (AYCH), and the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) to mention but a few. This study will examine the challenges experienced by representative samples of youth-led CSOs, NGOs, and community groups across the continent on climate change activism and their progress so far. The project will use qualitative and non-qualitative survey data to investigate the role of young people in climate change activism through holding governments accountable for their commitments and actions on climate change (by reporting failures and successes), pushing for more ambitious targets and policies, monitoring their progress, use of legal mechanisms, such as lawsuits, appealing to international bodies to challenge government inaction. What are the possible prospects for these bodies? How can coalitions of CSOs and NGOs across the continent foster better policies and political will to tackle climate change? In addition, principles and insight into countries that are progressing more will be analyzed to strengthen others. As COP28 draws near, strategic studies to end climate change apathy through coordinated actions of youth organizations will remain critical.
