Equipping Africa’s youth to face the climate crisis

Behind the global turmoil of recent months there remains a stark reality: the world is in the grip of a long-term crisis from which there is no easy exit. The build-up of greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution is already bringing threats to human health, agriculture and security, and if a rapid move towards renewables is not achieved, humanity’s very existence will be at risk.

If we are to achieve a just transition to sustainability and avoid authoritarian measures, then education is key. While we cannot all be climate scientists, every person can and must have a basic understanding of the causes and impacts of climate change, along with the skills and values to bring change.

Young people are well aware of this. A recent survey of about 5,000 undergraduate students in Brazil, Fiji, Kenya and Mozambique carried out by the Climate-U project showed a strong endorsement of climate change education at universities.

As many as 83% of students wanted to have more opportunities for climate learning in their university experience, and higher education lagged behind internet, social media, mainstream media and friends as a source of information on climate.

There have been some important developments in this area in recent years. Kenyatta University, Kenya, as part of the Climate-U project, revamped its Growing Leaders programme to engage with climate issues and establish the Green Education Hub to promote student-led environmental change.

Yet, to a large extent these initiatives have been confined to particular institutions. There is an urgent need to scale up these initiatives to reach a broader proportion of the population.

Climate change course for undergraduates

Africa is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Ironically, it is a continent that has done very little to provoke this situation, which threatens the long-term livelihoods of millions of its citizens. Currently, Africa is also a continent that stands little chance of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

It is against this backdrop that the Center for Education and Sustainable Development in Africa (CESDA), through collaboration with other partners among the Climate-U Network is bringing together African universities to offer a 12-week course on Climate Change and Sustainable Development (Acclimatise) for undergraduate students.

The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course is innovative in involving two distinctive elements: an online component that is common to all universities, and an in-person, experiential element that engages with each specific context. This combination allows the course to combine the required scientific literacy with practical skills and dispositions relevant to local realities.

The course involves participatory research and engagement with local communities to create opportunities to innovate, to empower and to co-create solutions to the challenges of climate change and sustainable development in Africa.

Working with local communities, learners have the opportunity to examine and co-create solutions on diverse topics including endogenous flood adaptation strategies; organic farming, agroforestry and conservation agriculture for climate rehabilitation; impacts of extreme weather events on public health; navigating climate change impacts on the blue economy, including challenges and adaptation strategies for fishing communities; disaster risk assessments; and community awareness of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Additionally, the course and accompanying seminars contain case studies and success stories from all over the world in areas of climate change and sustainability practices. It also provides an opportunity to learn across local, national and regional boundaries.

Fostering a ‘can do’ mentality

The project’s central belief is that, if young African students can explore why climate change is happening, and what they can do about it in their daily lives – as individuals, as families, and as communities – then the battle is already half-won. It’s about positivity, fostering a ‘can do’ mentality, and empowerment.

There are many success stories across Africa of how individuals have embraced change and found innovative ways to climb out of poverty, produce nutritious food, generate renewable energy, make quality products out of ‘waste’ and develop resilience. These can be harnessed and integrated into a positive learning experience for students both within and outside the continent.

The project team believes it is high time education was given the priority it deserves, and that COIL can be a cost-effective way of passing on the message and reaching huge audiences across the African continent and beyond, while leveraging on an extensive network of expertise and resources.

This continent-wide initiative has the potential to make a substantial impact on accelerating the implementation of the SDGs and addressing growing climate change challenges in Africa.

A ‘remarkable’ level of interest

Integrating the course into several African higher education institutions will strengthen the regional involvement of universities in climate change and sustainability dialogues and action.

A unique element of the COIL course is that it will be offered to students across all disciplines in universities. This ensures that all students, not only those from an environmental science background, will be exposed to climate change and sustainable development education.

Graduating many well-informed learners about climate change and sustainable development will contribute to diverse professionals who are multiplier agents in climate action.

The course uses local teaching and learning materials that document climate change and sustainable development challenges and solutions. Teaching the course using local case studies will play a significant role in helping students to personally relate more to the climate change and sustainable development challenges that they face on a daily basis.

Conscious that producing such a course is an immense challenge, it has been run as a pilot since February 2025, after which it will be reviewed and reformulated where necessary before rolling out across Africa and beyond. The pilot will end at the end of June.

For the pilot, 150 students have been selected in 10 universities: in Kenya: Kenyatta University, Kisii University, the University of Nairobi and Kenya Methodist University; in Ghana: the University for Development Studies, the University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology; as well as the Emmanuel Alayande University of Education in Nigeria; the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and the University of Zambia.

The demand for places has massively exceeded the supply (the number of available places for registration was oversubscribed by a factor of 10, despite the very short time within which the course was advertised). This shows the remarkable level of interest from students that this course has generated. The pilot is funded by Gower Street Foundation.

Climate learning essential for all professionals

The course is one of the legacy education projects that emerged from the African Year of Education 2024 and was presented at a high-level continental education conference hosted by the African Union in Mauritania from 9-11 December 2024.

It is also fully in line with the COP 29 ‘Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience’, which focuses on ‘catalysing investment in education, skills, health, and well-being, in particular for children and youth … and enhancing environmental literacy through education standards’.

After the pilot phase, the hope is to expand this initiative across many more universities on the continent. Given that the online component has already been developed, it is a relatively low-cost undertaking for new institutions.

Yet, there are inevitably challenges posed by curricular structures, with some institutions unwilling to offer optional units without a clear connection to disciplinary areas.

These traditional mindsets will need to shift if we are to provide the learning environment that African students want and need. Climate learning cannot be avoided in today’s world, and needs to be part of the knowledge base of every professional and citizen.

It is also hoped that the initiative will spread beyond the African continent. The Climate-U network now has 27 members in 10 countries in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and there are opportunities for developing provision in these other regions. Dialogue and knowledge exchange between these different cultural and language contexts will be vital for achieving planetary sustainability.

Research on climate change education to date has shown conclusively that knowledge, alone, is insufficient for bringing behaviour change.

Students also need to be inspired, to have real experiences of engaging with communities and to develop the skills needed to bring change. This new initiative brings together classroom and experiential learning to generate these different attributes needed by African students in the coming decades.

Ultimately, all universities need to provide these kinds of rich learning experiences on climate if we are to have any chance of heading off the monumental challenges ahead.

Jackline Nyerere is an associate professor of education and the director for international programmes and collaborations at Kenyatta University. Tristan McCowan is a professor of international education, Institute of Education, University College London.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.