Deadline: 18-Mar-22
The African Women’s Development and Communication Network has launched the African Feminist Academy for Climate Justice (AFACJ).
The 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in 2021 is nothing less than a code red to humanity. The overwhelming scientific evidence available to date tells them one thing, that they need to act and act now if they are to reverse the wretched effects of climate crisis they are experiencing right now.
The world bank research shows that, up to 132 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty by climate change by 2030, majority of them will be from sub-Saharan Africa, yet Climate change is not a household issue, nor is it a priority public policy issues in most African countries. And for those few countries and communities prioritizing climate change, they still frame climate change solely as a scientific problem requiring technical solutions, ignoring social, economic, political, and the historical aspect of it. Unfortunately, even though, African women and girls in all their diversities continue to carry the brunt of climate crisis, they have been pushed aside in all climate change policy processes and programs in the pretext of lacking technical capacity to understand the complexities of climate change.
To this end, FEMNET will initiate the African Feminist Academy for Climate Justice, which is designed to strengthen the capacity of African Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs), Girls and Young Women Organizations (GYWO) and feminist groups to be abreast with science, history, politics, and economics of climate change.
Climate crisis, continue to ravage lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the world. In Africa, women, and girls in all their diversity are carrying the brunt of climate crisis, yet their voices are not being heard, their realities ignored, and their needs unfulfilled. Left alone to survive multiple crisis, African women are organizing, preserving, and sharing indigenous knowledge and innovating to protect the environment, fight climate change and dismantle systems of oppression and exploitation. African women and girls are certain that the climate narrative in the continent must change.
The Academy will bring together African women’s rights organizations (WROs), girls and young women-led organizations and feminist groups to be abreast with science, history, politics, and economics of climate change.
Objectives
- The Central Objective of the African Feminist Academy for Climate Justice is to build collective power (power of knowledge) of African women and girls to advance climate justice, disrupt oppressive systems and recreate just, equal, and t sustainable societies for people and the planet.
- Build a cohort of feminists, journalists and WROs, GYWOs leaders passionate about climate justice and committed to change climate change narrative in Africa.
- Strengthen the capacity of Women Rights Organizations (WRO), Girls and Young Women organizations, GYWOs, female journalists and feminist activists and groups on climate change issues in Africa using feminist lens.
- Generate body of knowledge on Africa feminist climate justice for policy influencing to challenge the existing climate justice narratives from a feminist and gendered perspective.
Eligibility Criteria
- From across Africa, priority will be given to applicants from Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mozambique, Senegal South Africa, Egypt and Somalia.
- Women’s rights activists and advocates – including young feminists working in positions of policy influence and advocacy for the advancement of climate justice rights.
- Journalists and bloggers interested in climate justice, science, history and politics of climate change.
- Academicians and feminist scholars.
For more information, visit https://femnet.org/2022/02/the-african-feminist-academy-for-climate-justice-afacj/