Quarterly Newsflash: Expanding Our Climate Weeks Across the Continent, Amplifying Youth Voices in Pivotal Climate Policy, and Celebrating Team Member Wins
A 2025 third-quarter newsflash from the ACA team
The third quarter of 2025 has been one of new beginnings for the African Climate Alliance team. Three firsts stand out.
We welcomed our new director, Celiwe Shivambu. We hosted the first-ever Johannesburg Climate Week. And, expanding beyond Cape Town and Johannesburg, several of our African Climate Alliance ambassadors hosted 8 Climate Week events in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, and Nigeria.
Across 19 events and 6 countries, we connected the dots between climate change and our many social crises. We showed that the climate crisis is not just about changing weather patterns, but it’s a human rights crisis that amplifies existing inequalities. It touches our lives when it comes to how we access food, water, energy, housing, transport, and impacts gender inequity.
Simply put: for the first time, September was our month of climate action.
These firsts are milestones that speak to the season of growth that African Climate Alliance has been in – deepening our commitment to the work and listening to the youth we serve so that we can create an even stronger movement with their visions at the centre.
Before we finish the year off strong, here’s a closer look at what we have been up to in July, August, and September:
Deepening our understanding of Afrocentric solutions for sustainable futures at our Cape Town and Johannesburg youth-led Solidarity Gatherings
After returning from our continental travels to host youth-led Solidarity Gatherings in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in June, we decided to host two final gatherings closer to home — in Cape Town and Johannesburg in July.
Continuing on the theme, these two gatherings were planned and hosted by our South African ACA Ambassadors, and they brought youth together to explore African indigenous wisdom, cultural practices, and locally-relevant approaches to climate action – through food, art, and local innovation.
The aim of these gatherings was for youth to share ideas for how they can take action in their communities, while imagining a more just future.
Welcoming our new Director
We’ve entered an exciting new chapter at the African Climate Alliance. After six years of dedicated service and leadership, we said farewell to one of our Co-Leaders, Sarah Robyn Farrell, and welcomed Celiwe Shivambu as our new Director.
With this new role and as part of our commitment to continuous improvement and organisational learning, we transitioned from our Management Circle model back to a Director-led structure. As always, we're committed to being an organisational model that aligns with the change we call for in the world. This means embracing evolution in our structures when it serves our greater purpose.
Our governance principles remain unchanged: we continue to employ a socialist wage gap model, maintain full financial transparency, and draw from sociocratic elements, including decentralisation and ensuring every team member's input is valued in organisational planning. These principles will guide us as we grow and expand our impact across Africa.
To learn more, read here.
Celebrating Team Member Wins
This quarter, we celebrated two big team member wins. Our Movement Building Coordinator, Lisakhanya Mathiso, was featured on the coveted Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans list under the Climate Category.
Our Advocacy Coordinator, Sibusiso Mazomba, was recently appointed to the United Nations Secretary General's Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. The Group serves as a tool for the Secretary-General to engage directly with young people on climate-related issues. It recognises youth not only as a group disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, but as essential actors, innovators, leaders, and problem-solvers driving change at every level.
Capacitating young climate leaders with the skills to host their own Climate Week events during our train-the-trainer series
When we went to visit some of our ACA Ambassadors in June — in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — they expressed interest in hosting their own Climate Week events that aligned with Cape Town and Johannesburg Climate Week 2025. This is where the idea for a month of climate action began.
But, in order to prepare them to host their own events, we knew that we had to start with knowledge-sharing and skills development. So, we created our train-the-trainer series to share our learnings on what it takes to host a Climate Week event, the educational themes we cover, and the preparation required.
Held online from 4–6 August 2024, the Train the Trainer Workshop brought together young climate activists from our Ambassador programme and youth network for a three-day practical training focused on facilitation, project design, and community-led climate action. The sessions aimed to build participants’ capacity to design and deliver impactful, justice-centered, and inclusive events in their communities.
Across three themed days — Facilitation 101, Tools & Templates, and Practical Applications — participants gained both theoretical understanding and hands-on experience. After the three-day training concluded, participants were able to submit proposals for the Climate Week events they wanted to host — eventually leading to the eight events held in Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Malawi.
Connecting with community-led climate solutions during Cape Town Climate Week
Growing in traction and growing numbers, the fourth annual Cape Town Climate Week showed that climate change isn’t just about weather, and climate action isn’t reserved for environmentalists who went to school in leafy suburbs.
The week saw over 500 activists, community leaders, students, and citizens move around the city. Across 8 events, we journeyed from Mowbray to Langa, Elsies River, Delft, Mitchells Plain, Muizenberg, Khayelitsha, and Salt River — all while learning about the connections between climate change and social injustices and being exposed to organisations as the forefront of solutions.
Building on South Africa’s long history of grassroots organising to challenge systems of power and catalyse change, we spoke to people running community gardens, organising water action committees, advocating for a just transition from the ground up, and building houses that are able to deal with the effects of floods and fires.
To read more about the highlights from Cape Town Climate Week 2025, click here.
Hosting the first-ever Johannesburg Climate Week
The first-ever Johannesburg Climate Week brought together nearly 200 children, activists, community leaders, students, and citizens who moved across the city to explore how climate change and social injustice connect — and how they can be a part of the change.
Across three events in Braamfontein, Soweto, and Observatory, we skipped speeches, statistics, and conference halls. Instead, we focused on debates, screenings, planting, song, dance, and workshops that turned theory into action. Climate change is often discussed only in science, but we merged it with lived experience to spark a personal sense of responsibility.
Young people and children led the week from start to finish. Their closing request was simple: create more spaces where their voices are heard. The first Johannesburg Climate Week is only the beginning of a city- and continent-wide movement that challenges systems of power and catalyses change.
To read more about the highlights from Johannesburg Climate Week 2025, click here.
Taking youth-led Climate Week events to the rest of the continent
Johannesburg Climate Week wasn’t the only first for us.
For the first time, eight of our African Climate Alliance Ambassadors — young climate leaders who have been through our year-long mentorship programme — hosted their own Climate Week actions in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, and South Africa. Expanding what started as Cape Town Climate Week across the continent showed us that climate justice doesn’t belong in place, but can be built everywhere by young people leading in their own communities.
In Malawi, this took shape through a powerful workshop on Clean and Sustainable Energy for All, hosted at Youth Wave in Lilongwe. This was hosted by African Climate Alliance Ambassador Simeon Kalua.
The workshop created space to explore real solutions. Together, participants looked at pathways toward clean energy transitions that can break Malawi’s cycle of energy inequality and ensure a more just and sustainable future for all.
To read more about the workshop, click here.
Celebrating our contribution to the historic International Court of Justice Climate Ruling
In July, the International Court of Justice delivered a significant advisory opinion that will change how people all over the world hold their governments accountable. The ruling found that governments must take steps to protect children’s right to a healthy environment in the face of the worsening climate crisis.
At the end of last year, alongside five other youth-centred organisations in South Africa – including Black Girls Rising, African Climate Alliance (ACA), Save the Children SA Child Human Rights Defenders, Web Rangers, and the Presidential Climate Commission Youth Leaders Caucus – issued a formal submission to the South African delegates urging the government to advocate for their climate rights at the International Court of Justice. In July this year, we saw that our calls had been heard.
This advisory comes just a few months after the North Gauteng High Court made a ruling which effectively halted the South African government’s plans to build new coal-fired power plants on the basis that it had failed to consult widely enough and to take into consideration children’s right to a healthy environment – our Cancel Coal court case.
To learn more about the connections between these historic legal moments, read here.
Exploring the systemic roots of climate migration
For our next set of Writing Circle sessions, we met four times over the course of a month to write a collaborative op-ed on the layered roots of climate migration and how it will continue to affect youth.
The article argues that climate migration is never only about the weather. It is rooted in historical and political forces — colonial extraction, governance failures, and structural inequality — that determine who is most exposed to climate shocks and who has the means to stay or move safely. Drawing on recent examples and voices from youth living in affected communities, we explored how power, not just climate, drives displacement across the continent.
Unpacking energy ownership and a people-centred just transition
In our July and August online Back2Basics education workshop and ACA Dialogue, we deep-dived into how we power Africa's future. In this series of workshops, we will be learned about how energy and justice intersect, as well as unpack the idea of community-owned renewables.
Creating shared youth climate messaging at the Local Conference of Youth
Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) is a youth-led climate conference initiative endorsed by YOUNGO, the official youth constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. LCOYs occur in many countries in the lead up to the Global Conference of Youth – the official youth event that takes place before each COP.
This year, we were on the organising team for South Africa’s LCOY, which aimed to provide a space for young climate activists to network, share knowledge, build capacity, and draft national youth statements on climate issues to be presented at global climate talks. LCOY South Africa 2025 was co-hosted and organised by African Climate Alliance, Global Shapers Community Tshwane Hub, the Global Africa MUN Agency, the African Climate Reality Project, and supported by the Climate Action Network South Africa and Voices of Mzansi.
After many months of meeting, sharing ideas, gathering the perspectives of youth, and creating shared messaging, the official LCOY South Africa 2025 National Youth Statement on Local Governance & The Just Transition: An Exploration of the Urban was published in September. This is where young South Africans set out their priorities for climate action, fair governance, and a just transition in our cities.
To read the official Youth Statement, click here.
Ensuring youth are represented in NDC commitments
2025 has been the year of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). We have spent many months ensuring that youth voices are included in South Africa’s NDC — a climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the changes that are already occurring due to climate change, mandated by the Paris Agreement.
Since these plans were due in September, the end of this quarter marked the close of the policy advocacy and submission phase of the NDCs, with ACA leading and supporting two key formal policy submissions. The first was an organisational-level submission, which was compiled based on the many consultations we’ve had with the PCC and DFFE, alongside extensive research.
The second was a joint submission coordinated by ACA through a consultation event with children and youth organisations, schools, clubs, and societies. This marks the first time that children and youth groups have come together to submit a joint contribution to the NDC process — a significant milestone. Both submissions have been positively received by the DFFE, and we now await the release of the final draft as our NDC advocacy continues.
Our advocacy remains centred on the call for NDCs to meaningfully include children and youth, not as passive victims, but as actors, innovators, and leaders. This requires, firstly, embedding entrepreneurship education from basic through tertiary levels, and secondly, aligning education, skills, training, and capacity-building initiatives to enable young people to access green jobs across sectors such as water, energy, waste, and agriculture.
We are also pushing for the establishment of a dedicated climate finance window for youth- and women-led initiatives, and for South Africa to urgently appoint a Santiago Network liaison to ensure the country can access the technical assistance, knowledge, and resources needed to address loss and damage.
Making sure youth voices were front and centre at the Africa Climate Summit
In September, our Director, Celiwe Shivambu, flew to Ethiopia to attend the Africa Climate Summit, which happens every two years and brings together climate leaders to advance African-led climate solutions — focusing on how the continent can be a driver of climate action and a powerhouse of solutions, not just a victim of climate change.
As a youth-led organisation, attending this summit meant making sure that the perspectives and demands of young people were represented in every room we were in.
“If Africa Climate Summit 2 taught me anything as a first-time Managing Director it is this: Africa’s youth are not waiting. We are organizing, litigating, teaching, and rebuilding. What we need now is finance that matches our courage, finance that is fast, flexible, and accountable to the communities it intends to serve.”
To read more of her reflections on what we must demand and build, together, click here.
Now, it’s time to end the year on a high note as we head into the fourth quarter of 2025.
