Young people are channeling their energies into ecological farming and land restoration, in self-help efforts to provide food security and create decent work. They are not waiting for a handout but creating their own environmental solutions – according to Claire Nasike Akello, founder of Kenya’s Hummingbird Foundation and an environmental campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.

In a recent interview with CDKN on Africa’s potential for accelerating climate adaptation action, Ms Akello says: “I work with an amazing group of young people and we are scaling up the solutions that we are doing, from the local level…teaching their communities about ecological farming and teaching their communities about protecting their environment with the local knowledge that they have.”

This includes capturing precious indigenous knowledge that can help communities adapt to climate variability and change: “For such a long time indigenous communities have been always left behind … and yet they hold a massive amount of knowledge when it comes to protection of our climate, when it comes to environmental sustainability, when it comes to climate adaptation.”

She also sees African youth as being on the leading edge of climate advocacy efforts: “[Climate change] is putting us at risk, we’re seeing a lot of flooding, a lot of droughts, and these are things that we as Africans, we as young Africans need to stand up against and talk about.”

Watch the full video interview with Claire Nasike Akello:  

This is one of six short video interviews that CDKN undertook with African adaptation experts to explore how the continent can accelerate adaptation. Find out more about the film series ‘Adaptation Voices’.