<
https://www.positive.news/society/climate-cafe-ecoanxiety-nigeria-africa/>
"Akindipe Akinjisola, a 29-year-old banker, lives in Wawa on the outskirts of
Lagos, Nigeria’s bustling economic centre.
He moved here to avoid the city centre’s rents, which have soared by an average
of 91% in the past five years due to rapid urbanisation. But every year during
the rainy season, Akinjisola (pictured above) is forced to move back to the
city for refuge.
Wawa has no proper drainage system, and when heavy rain falls – as it often
does between March and October – the neighbourhood floods prompt wide-scale
evacuation. In recent years, the rains have only got heavier – 2022 recorded
some of the country’s worst flooding on record, in which more than a million
Nigerians were displaced and 800 killed.
“In Wawa, people lose their homes, the houses they’ve built. For me, just
because it is the rainy season, fear starts coming,” Akinjisola tells
Positive
News. He’s speaking in January at the launch of the country’s first climate
cafe. After hearing about it in a WhatsApp group, and in search of safe space
to discuss his feelings, he decided to pay the cafe a visit.
More than a dozen people are gathered at the office of SustyVibes, an NGO
founded by 31-year-old Nigerian activist Jennifer Uchendu, that is on a mission
to make sustainability cool and relatable in Africa. Long tables are adorned
with pots of flowers, ready for the grand opening of the climate cafe – which
is one strand of its new initiative, The Eco-Anxiety Africa Project (TEAP). A
wide smile on the face of project manager Ayomide Olude welcomes everyone into
the space. “It is so good to know I am not the only one feeling these emotions
and there are others who feel the way I feel,” she says.
The climate cafe is one of a just a few across the continent – the first
emerged in east Africa in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, and more have popped up
recently in Nigeria’s west African neighbour Benin. In Nigeria, where
discussion of eco-anxiety is even rarer than that of the climate crisis, TEAP
and its cafe are stepping into the vacuum at the intersection of climate and
mental health in Africa."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
