Our programme areas

ReAlign

We work with activists, CSOs, governments and funders to make climate policy and more just, inclusive, and accountable. From policy and public budgets to climate finance and investment tools, our ReAlign programme ensures that decisions shaping the future of African communities are based on grounded, just, and locally relevant knowledge.

HAKI Activist Lab

SIRA

PESA

Hadithi Zetu

Our flagship data platform, Hadithi Zetu (“Our Stories”), captures the depth and nuance of community realities through disaggregated, participatory, and place-based data. We use tools like iterative community-based data collection, participatory mapping, and oral storytelling to ensure that evidence reflects lived experience, not just top-down metrics. The hub supports both decision-makers and movements with grounded, decolonial data for more responsive climate action.

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We define "Liberatory Environmentalism" as a deeply intersectional process that centres feminist, decolonial, and emancipatory politics into climate and environmental interventions. We believe that climate and environmental decision making does not exist in a vacuum, but is rather deeply embedded within broader power dynamics, systemic injustices, and structural barriers to liberation. As a result, we view the climate moment as an opportunity to reshape systems of inequality.

We believe in an emerging vision, pluriversally defined by the communities we work with. Our organisational goal is to centre liberation within climate and environmental policy and investments by changing the way climate and environmental decisions are made on the continent.

AN EMERGING MISSION

Our mission is to support and facilitate climate and environmental decision making rooted in the lived realities and development priorities of those at the frontline of climate impacts.

Theory of change

Our theory of change aims to support a just, climate-resilient continent where communities shape their own development pathways, knowledge systems are decolonised, and decision-making is rooted in equity, solidarity, and care for both people and planet.

Challenges and Assumptions

African climate and development systems remain shaped by external narratives, extractive knowledge frameworks, and top-down decision-making. Climate finance and policy processes often reproduce dependency, marginalisation, and invisibility of grassroots knowledge, particularly from women, Indigenous peoples, and local organisers. As a result:

Climate action continues to be poorly aligned with community priorities

Current models of investment and finance risk perpetuating colonial patterns of control.

Climate and environmental knowledge and data are often extracted rather than co-created.

The core assumption of our Theory of Change is that sustainable and equitable climate action in Africa will only be achieved when the communities most affected by climate and ecological changes are empowered to define problems, lead knowledge production, and influence the flow of policy, resources, and decisions that affect their lives.

Our mission at Africa ReAdapt, is therefore to realign climate and development policy, practice, and finance with the lived realities, data, and knowledge of African communities through decolonial methodologies, participatory research, and cross-sector collaboration.

Approach

Africa ReAdapt works as a think-and-do tank that bridges science, policy, and society through decolonial, participatory, and community-driven methodologies.

We create continuous feedback loops between communities, researchers, policymakers, and funders—centering African agency in defining, implementing, and measuring climate action.

Our work is anchored in two interconnected programme areas:

Hadithi Zetu (Our Stories):
A data and storytelling hub that nurtures community-based knowledge systems, participatory research, and decolonial data methodologies to inform policy and practice.
ReAlign:
A policy and advocacy platform that strengthens African regional solidarity, promotes participatory grant-making, and supports grassroots organisers to engage in budget, investment, and policy processes.

Pathway of change 1

Knowledge and Narrative Shift

If communities are equipped and resourced to document their realities and define their priorities using decolonial and feminist methodologies,

then African climate narratives will shift from deficit and dependency to agency and self-determination, influencing the frameworks of climate policy and finance

Pathway of change 2

Institutional and Policy Alignment

If policymakers, funders, and regional bodies engage with grounded, community-derived evidence,

then climate and development policies will better align with local realities, leading to more effective and equitable outcomes.

Pathway of change 3

Resourcing Power and Participation

If financial flows and grant-making processes are designed to be participatory and responsive to community-based data,

then climate finance will advance justice, not extraction—strengthening local resilience, accountability, and innovation.

Pathway of change 4

Movement and Solidarity Building

If African actors build collective, regional positions rooted in solidarity and liberation,

then Africa will exert stronger influence in continental and global forums such as the AU, G20, BRICS, and COP processes, embedding justice and sovereignty in global climate governance.