Our children will fight for the climate: How congo-basin writers prophesied global youth climate activism

Abstract

In the context of climate change and ecological breakdown, this essay suggests that some Congo-Basin writers had prophesied the emergence of global youth/children’s climate activism. Specifically, it contends that Congolese writer and former cabinet minister Henri Djombo, Francophone Cameroonian-born, Brazzaville-based playwright, stage director and climate activist Osée Collins Koagne, Gabonese geographer, activist publisher and writer Nadia Origo, and Anglophone Cameroonian writer and environmentalist Ekpe Inyang had literarily predicted youth climate activism that correlates with the current global Youth Strikes for Climate. Drawing on postcolonial ecocriticism and writers as literary prophets, it uses Djombo and Koagne’s co-authored play Le Cri de la forêt (2015a), Djombo’s play Les Bénévoles (2015b), Nadia Origo’s novel Le Voyage d’Aurore (2014 [2007]), and Inyang’s plays The Hill Barbers (2010) and Beware (1993), among others, to argue that current global youth climate activism was, to an extent, prophesied in Africa through literary advocacy for including children in future climate solutions before emerging in Europe, especially through the Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and other youth climate activists around the world. The essay also traces the role of youth in climate activism, partly accounts for the timid participation of African youth in climate protests and highlights the motivations behind youth climate activism for both the young characters in the texts and their writers.