The Afrocentric Imperative in Tackling African Environmental Challenges: Afroecosolidarity Perspectives

Abstract

Africa is not exempted from environmental challenges. Environmental challenges in the continent include desertification, deforestation, soil erosion, gas flaring, overpopulation, resource wars, multidimensional poverty, oil spillage and pollution. The challenge is that in the process of seeking solutions to the environmental crisis in Africa, solutions rooted in African indigenous ecological values may be neglected or sidelined in preference for Western or Eurocentric ideologies and philosophies. This paper argues that there is a need to pay attention to environmental solutions based on indigenous ecological ideals and values. African solutions to her environmental problems should be Afrocentric, sourced from an Afroecosolidarity perspective. A critical hermeneutic and analytic method is adopted here to help understand the issues that the paper deals with. The paper finds that there is an undue privileging of Western ideas in the search for solutions to African environmental problems. The paper concludes that solutions to African environmental problems should be both Afrocentric and also informed by the value of Afroecosolidarity