Africa 2025: Agenda

When arriving at the venue, please stop by the registration desk at the entrance gate to check in and pick up your badge. Please show your registration confirmation email (printed or on your mobile device) along with your passport or photo ID at the desk. If you are attending the C&A Assembly or part of the Event Team, your badge will be available to collect from 16–17 June. You will receive more information at the registration desk.

Enjoy some coffee, tea, juice and light snacks in the morning before the conference begins. Get chatting with fellow participants and ease into a day of inspiring sessions and networking.

Rise and shine with purpose! Whether you’re fueled by sunrise or strong coffee, join us for a morning of rooted connection as we co-create a new vision for Africa’s nature economy – one that defies extraction and blossoms from culture, justice, reciprocity and the living wisdom of the African landscapes. During this session, we’ll use our imagination to plant ideas, nurture collaborations and grow a shared mural for economies that heal, not exploit. Bring your stories, your dreams, even your morning grogginess. No expertise required – just a willingness to dig into the fertile soil of ”what if?”.

Across Africa, young leaders are restoring ecosystems, uplifting communities and reimagining a more resilient future. This inspiring video brings together voices from East Africa’s drylands and forests – each sharing a unique story of transformation.
From Kenya, we hear how ecofeminism is inspiring women to pursue sustainable agriculture and community-based restoration, while in Rwanda, digital media offers a vital tool for young people to amplify local action.
Meanwhile, in Uganda, forest restoration takes root through school food forests, innovative waste management and environmental education. Lastly, we return to Rwanda to meet young people restoring their country’s drylands and building climate resilience.

Join us for a vibrant performance by traditional African dancers from the Viwandani Comprehensive Community Organization (VICCO), which is based in Nairobi’s Mukuru informal settlement and offers various initiatives to its residents, including urban farming, education, health engagement and cultural programs. This dance performance aims to showcase some of Africa’s rich cultural heritage, celebrating the resilience and creativity of its communities.
This will then be followed by an epic trumpet performance by Samso, a renowned trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, and music producer from Nairobi, Kenya.

How can Africa leverage the nature economy to build a new development model that is nature positive, socially equitable and economically robust?
This opening plenary will explore how Africa’s natural capital can be the centerpiece of inclusive growth, innovation and resilience across the continent. It will set the tone for GLF Africa by putting nature at the heart of the socioeconomic transformation that Africa needs. Hear African thought leaders, scientists, practitioners and other experts unpack the myriad opportunities for Africa to rethink development and revitalize its economy.

What will Africa’s landscapes look like when reimagined by those deeply rooted in them? This intergenerational conversation will bring together community leaders, young changemakers and creative voices to share bold, grounded visions for ecosystem restoration, thriving livelihoods and climate justice. Centered on local circumstances and unapologetic about the need for systemic change, this session will craft a collective dialogue about transforming landscapes – and the futures they hold – from the ground up.

A local buffet-style lunch will be served in the food area, featuring a variety of small dishes. Don’t miss an exhilarating lunchtime performance by acrobats from the Viwandani Comprehensive Community Organization (VICCO).

Africa is grappling with land degradation, tenure insecurity and contested governance, which are undermining both restoration efforts and local livelihoods. Two-thirds of Africa’s productive land is degraded, exacerbating threats to food security and forcing millions to migrate from their ancestral landscapes. In this session, we will unpack these interconnected land challenges and explore rooted approaches applied by locally-led organizations from the GLFx chapter network. Stay tuned to learn how these stewards are working to secure land tenure, strengthen governance and create inclusive and resilient restoration across Africa.

What does restoration look like in practice? At this interactive Action Corner, join a series of practical workshops throughout the day led by landscape experts from the GLFx network, Restoration Stewards and YIL representatives. Learn tangible techniques rooted in local knowledge – from making eco-friendly bio-inputs to preserving native trees and more. Each 15-minute session will immerse you in skills and easy-to-apply methods to spark restoration back in your home landscape.

What does restoration look like in practice? At this interactive Action Corner, join a series of practical workshops throughout the day led by landscape experts from the GLFx network, Restoration Stewards and YIL representatives. Learn tangible techniques rooted in local knowledge – from making eco-friendly bio-inputs to preserving native trees and more. Each 15-minute session will immerse you in skills and easy-to-apply methods to spark restoration back in your home landscape.

Meet and connect with people from all over the world working towards a sustainable future. You will be randomly matched with other participants and have the chance to chat for a few minutes. After that, the platform will automatically assign you another participant to chat with. Always make sure to briefly introduce yourself and start by explaining why you’re interested in the conference themes and how they relate to your work.

This session will showcase real-world experiences and strategies in scaling up farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) in Kenya and Ethiopia. Highlighting the role of communities, governments and development partners, the session will explore insights from the FMNR Scaling Manual and WV International’s atingi e-learning module. Through case presentations, dialogue and reflection, we will identify key opportunities, challenges and enablers to grow FMNR across Africa to advance forest and landscape restoration goals based on these East African case studies.
Session Host:

In a world where science is questioned, facts politicized, and AI can distort truth, whose knowledge shapes our future? From ancestral wisdom and oral traditions to satellite data and youth experience, knowledge exists in many forms. Yet all too often, some forms are ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. This session challenges that imbalance—exploring how diverse knowledge systems can co-exist, contest, and enrich one another.
Drawing on lessons from Regreening Africa, the Great Green Wall, and beyond, we’ll examine how to build trust, legitimacy, and innovation across knowledge domains to drive inclusive, large-scale landscape restoration in a rapidly changing world.

What does restoration look like in practice? At this interactive Action Corner, join a series of practical workshops throughout the day led by landscape experts from the GLFx network, Restoration Stewards and YIL representatives. Learn tangible techniques rooted in local knowledge – from making eco-friendly bio-inputs to preserving native trees and more. Each 15-minute session will immerse you in skills and easy-to-apply methods to spark restoration back in your home landscape.

Take a break to enjoy some more coffee, tea, juice and light snacks and chat with fellow participants.

Young people and communities from across Africa are stepping up to protect the plane, and their stories deserve to be heard.This video showcase brings together compelling reflections from youth leading restoration efforts in their communities.
From coastal conservation and climate advocacy to local engagement and environmental education, these changemakers are proving that real impact starts at the grassroots. Tune in and be inspired by how passion, purpose, and local action are transforming landscapes for the better.
Session Host:

What does restoration look like in practice? At this interactive Action Corner, join a series of practical workshops throughout the day led by landscape experts from the GLFx network, Restoration Stewards and YIL representatives. Learn tangible techniques rooted in local knowledge – from making eco-friendly bio-inputs to preserving native trees and more. Each 15-minute session will immerse you in skills and easy-to-apply methods to spark restoration back in your home landscape.

Today’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) finance frameworks are still largely focused on screening out risk – and they’re not enough to tackle the climate emergency.
In this session, we call for a radical rethinking of sustainable finance: one that shifts capital flows to the frontlines, where they can support locally-led solutions for climate resilience, ecosystem restoration and improved livelihoods. Meet trailblazers who are turning ESG and impact investing into tools for regeneration, inclusion and sustainability, and learn how finance can help us achieve the SDGs by investing in smallholder farmers, rural communities and landscape restoration.

What does it take to ensure AI is solving real, context-specific challenges – driven by African leadership? This session will explore how African-led tech solutions are reshaping agrifood systems to be smarter, more inclusive and adaptive to today’s challenges. Our panelists will share scalable solutions that integrate AI and technology with traditional knowledge to develop real-world solutions for local ecosystems. Join us for a visionary hybrid session with leading African innovators and practitioners at the intersection of digital transformation and sustainable development. These women are not just imagining the future – they’re building it.

Take a moment to pause, reflect, and engage with fellow participants. This break is a great opportunity to network, share insights, and build meaningful connections.

What next for Africa’s nature economy? This closing plenary will distill key messages from the day to develop a roadmap to scale up a new development model for Africa.
Discover Africa’s growing landscape restoration movement, and learn about the tools, partnerships and innovations needed to turn the continent’s restoration and nature economy goals into reality – from blended finance and impact investment to AI and local upskilling. Join us in drawing an investable, people-centered, tech-supported roadmap to scale up Africa’s nature economy and create millions of green jobs for communities across the continent.

For millennia, nature has provided us with an abundance of blessings. Money is not its currency, but the fresh air we breathe every second, clean water we can’t live without, to the soil that nurtures our food. All for free.
It is now time to reincorporate the value of nature and the ecosystem into our economy.
Watch what restoration leaders in the GLFx network envision about the nature economy in Nigeria, Chad, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone. Please note this video will be played during the Closing plenary.

Join us for a special closing reception to wrap up GLF Africa. Meet colleagues from a wide range of backgrounds, enjoy drinks and food and celebrate the day with music and dancing. The reception will feature a live nyatiti acoustic performance by Makadem, Kenya’s renowned “Ohanglaman” known for fusing Luo musical traditions with contemporary sounds.
Following the live performance, we’ll keep the energy alive with a dynamic DJ set by Lady Hash, whose genre-blending mixes pulse with African house, Afrobeat and soul. Let’s celebrate Africa’s creativity and resilience and close the day with rhythm, joy and connection.

Drops of Hope follows the inspiring leadership of Mama Chuputu and fellow Malawian farmers as they respond to land degradation and erratic rainfall caused by the climate crisis. Teaming up with the GLFx Lilongwe chapter, they embrace water harvesting, soil restoration and climate-smart agriculture through community learning and demonstration farms. This story captures how knowledge is shared, how resilience is nurtured and how a deep sense of collective ownership is restoring both livelihoods and the land – with every step forward sowing seeds of hope.