– Precious Oparanozie, Communications, Engagements & Partnerships Manager
January 2025 is almost over; yet, we remain incredibly grateful for the support of our impact-focused partners, community members, and volunteers in 2024! Because of you, we have made bigger strides in changing the narrative of Africa: from poverty to prosperity, inequalities to social inclusion, and climate change and environmental degradation to a just and sustainable transition.
Here’s How We Spent Our 2024:
- Young EcoHeroes Transforming Africa’s Biggest Challenges Into Opportunities for Green Growth
- Launching Green Growth DigiHub: A One-Stop Centre for Green Growth Professionals, CSOs, and Young Leaders!
- Mainstreaming Green Growth in the Media With Green Growth TV & Studios
- Launching EcoJustice Africa: Citizen-Driven, Tech-enabled Initiative to Combat Environmental Crimes
- Green Growth Hub Activated
- Engaging Policy Leaders for Green Growth
1. Young EcoHeroes Transforming Africa’s Biggest Challenges Into Opportunities for Green Growth
Green Growth Africa’s EcoHeroes Initiative employs the learner-centred and co-creation approach to educate and empower African youth in secondary schools to solve environmental challenges in a way that combines and provides social and economic impacts. The 2023/2024 Cohort of the initiative focused on acquiring and applying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) knowledge and skills to create environmental solutions that also integrate social and economic gains. Over 8,355 students (4193 male and 4162 females) and 2442 teachers (685 male, 1757 female) from 78 secondary schools in 18 African countries were impacted directly and indirectly through the programme.
Here’s some of the amazing stories from last year’s cohort:
- All-Female Mauritius Team Design Hydropower Generator
When Cyclone Balal struck Mauritius, it left the community of Loreto without power for over 24 hours, plunging lives into darkness and uncertainty. Inspired to find a solution, a team of 12 young girls from Loreto School, Mauritius, transformed this challenge into innovation. Driven by their vision, they designed and created a prototype for the “GEN-DRO Hydroelectric Project,” a mini-hydropower generator fueled by rainwater. This groundbreaking project addressed two urgent issues: recurring flooding and the need for renewable energy. The team also demonstrated resourcefulness as they combined a water storage container, a pump, and a turbine ingeniously built from wooden ladle spoons and a repurposed fan motor for the hydropower generator!
- Students Build Smart Waste Aggregator
Every day, heaps of improperly sorted waste clog landfills in Nigeria, worsening pollution and wasting recyclable materials. A team of 20 students from George Green Baptist School decided to change that. Armed with coding skills, they built a smart waste segregator that uses C++ programming to automatically separate dry and wet waste. To complement the system, they placed color-coded bins made from plastic buckets across their school to collect paper, plastic, and organic waste. Their innovation thus ensures that more recyclables are saved from landfills
- Giving Plastic Waste a Second Life for 3D Printing
With only 9% of plastic waste recycled globally, the team of eight students from Institut Asifiwa, Congo, set out to reinvent the story of waste management. Their project, Recycling for Planet, introduced a groundbreaking solution: a recreator machine designed to upcycle plastic waste into filaments for 3D printing. Over weeks of relentless effort, they built and refined the machine, and they used the filaments created from plastic waste to produce functional 3D-printed cups! Watch the project video here.
- Powering Local Businesses With Innovative Electricity Systems
Faced with the challenge of energy poverty crippling small businesses in their community, 22 students from Calvary Arrow College, Nigeria, took action. The team developed a fully functional solar-powered electricity system using readily available materials that now provides reliable energy to small businesses, reducing reliance on erratic power supply. Their achievement is a testament to the power of youth-led innovation in addressing real-world problems. See their impact video here.
2. Launching Green Growth DigiHub: A One-Stop Centre for Green Growth Professionals, CSOs, and Young Leaders!
Green Growth DigiHub is the first integrated and multi-stakeholder digital networking and convergence platform that facilitates system-wide links, knowledge sharing for policy-making, visibility for green growth initiatives for investment; consultancy and networking for green growth actors and experts in Africa. The platform serves as a continental map, database, resource library, and catalogue for profiling green growth initiatives and experts in Africa. The integrated digital platform comprises five major tiers: Green Growth Projects, Experts, Social Networking, Media and Opportunities.
This incredible platform was officially launched on World Environment Day, June 5 2024 at the Green Growth Workshop. The virtual event had over 500 attendees and sessions from leaders and policymakers in the green growth sector – including a keynote address from the German State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action, Jennifer Morgan. Since then, over 1,400 persons have downloaded, signed up and now actively leverage the Green Growth DigiHub. The digital platform has also been visited 5,492 times by 3,762 unique visitors from 71 countries. Join the movement by downloading and signing up on Google Play Store or the Web Application!
3. Mainstreaming Green Growth in the Media With Green Growth TV & Studios
As part of our commitment to policy engagement and effective communication, we kick-started the state-of-the-art Green Growth Television & Studios, in Abuja, Nigeria in September 2024. Green Growth Television & Studios is a data analysis, communications, multimedia, broadcasting and training hub that provides wide and effective communication, education, advocacy, policy dialogues and strengthen civic space on green growth. The television channel provides public platforms to showcase green growth solutions, opening them to opportunities to scale-up by the industry, influence policy, and facilitate behavioural change. Moreover, the channel provides equitable access to the media, builds the capacity of actors for green growth (organisations and individuals) to tell their stories with improved newsworthiness and raise journalists with integrated understanding of social, economic, and environmental development dimensions. Check out the TV here.
So far, leaders of 22 civil society organizations (CSOs) across 9 countries in Africa (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Ghana, Somalia, Zambia, Chad, Madagascar, & Gambia) as well as USA, Saudi Arabia, India & Vietnam have leveraged the Green Growth Television & Studios to effectively advocate for sustainable resource governance, influence policy directions, and engage with a broader audience. Between October and December 2024, 25 audiovisual knowledge programmes were produced on key issues such as wildlife conservation and anti-trafficking, transition to renewable energy, effective response to nature-based disasters, and exploitation of the rights of children in the mining industry. Moreover, the platform also increased global visibility for these CSOs to access partnerships with community leaders, media organisations, and private experts to scale their ecosystem conservation and resource management projects as it currently has 1230+ subscribers on YouTube, with over 60,000 total views on YouTube.
4. Introducing EcoJustice Africa: Citizen-Driven, Tech-enabled Initiative to Combat Environmental Crimes
EcoJustice Africa, Green Growth Africa’s novel programme, is a people-powered and technology-driven initiative aimed at empowering citizens with knowledge and technology tools to combat environmental crimes and violations in Africa. Given the untold consequences of the unbridled growth of environmental crimes in Africa, Green Growth Africa organised the Inaugural EcoJustice Workshop on Tuesday, December 10 2024, as a capacity-building virtual event to educate and empower rights holders (youth, women, and indigenous communities), civil society organisations, researchers, and other stakeholders on environmental rights, crimes/violations and justice in the African context and its impact on national and continental development – including the SDGs and Agenda 2063 of the African Union. The workshop also served as the official launch of the “EcoJustice Africa” initiative.
At the workshop, the “Green Growth Watch Mobile App” was launched and provided to the 342 youth, women, and members of indigenous communities in attendance to empower them with a digital eye-witness reporting tool to capture, document, and report audiovisual evidence of environmental crimes and related events within their localities in real time
Moreover, ahead of the Workshop, Green Growth Africa hosted a Press Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, to launch the EcoJustice Africa Initiative which empowered CSOs with the understanding and awareness of environmental rights and capacity to claim such rights in fighting environmental crimes. The Press Conference hosted over 10 journalists. The knowledge shared was reported on one of the leading TV platforms in Africa, Arise TV, as well as leading print media with millions of readers in Nigeria – The Guardian, Vanguard, The Nation, Daily Trust, Leadership and Gazette News.
5. Green Growth Hub Activated
Do you know that Green Growth Africa worked with fully remote teams for 6 out of the 7 years that we have been in operation??? Well, in January 2024 we moved into our very own physical office – and not just an office – Nigeria’s first ultra-modern green building developed from waste plastic bottles in Ibadan, Nigeria! What makes the building so special? It’s made entirely of recycled plastic bottles! That’s right; 27,333 plastic bottle-bricks were used to create this one-of-a-kind structure. Moreover, the building is fully-powered by solar. Learn more about the Green Building here.
Our Executive Director, Adedoyin Adeleke PhD (left) with Iyin Aboyeji, CEO Future Africa (right), during Aboyeji’s visit to the Green Growth Hub
In addition, Green Growth Africa engaged the host community of Lagbeja-Akingbile, Ibadan, on green growth concepts using unconventional approaches. This included, street naming, house numbering, community focus group discussions, and provision of solar street lights. Nine streets were named in the local communities as a lifelong education strategy for the local community on nature resource management. The street names include Green Growth Avenue, Biodiversity Close, Sustainability Close, Climate Close, Nature Close, Resilience Close, Conservation Close, E-Mobility Close, and Resilience Close. All the houses on the streets were also numbered based on the names of the street; a strategy for lifelong learning on conservation and environmental sustainability in the local time. Based on this effort, the local communities have taken significant actions to build on this by constructing drainages and paying more consciousness to the environment and natural resources around them. Moreover, five meetings were also organised with local communities in Ibadan, Nigeria on Sustainable Resource Management, one of which had the presence of the representatives of the World Wildlife Fund.
(Images 12-14 – Community Engagements)
Afterwards, the Green Growth TV Studios office – our Green Growth Hub in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city – was also fully equipped with modern, state-of-the-art media equipment for the TV programming and data analysis. See the studio tour here.
6. Engaging Policy Leaders for Green Growth
Green Growth Africa directly engaged with the Osun State government of Nigeria, the Executive Governor, H. Ẹ. Ademola Adeleke and his team on the need for adopting green growth strategies into his government’s development agenda. His Excellency pledged his administration’s dedication to being a “green government” and directed his team to explore collaboration opportunities with Green Growth Africa to sustainably maximise the state’s natural resources and protect the environment. See the report here.
With Osun State Governor and his team
Through Green Growth Africa’s capacity-building and knowledge-sharing engagement with the Kwara State government of Nigeria through the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Kwara State, Hon. Oloruntoyosi Thomas, the state government demonstrated interest in exploring innovative solutions for sustainably governing the state’s natural resources using the Green Growth Hub Building as a learning point.
Furthermore, Green Growth Africa engaged in a knowledge-sharing presentation with the Consulate General of the Italian Government in Nigeria on advancing socially inclusive, climate-resilient, and resource-efficient economic growth in Nigeria and across Africa. In response, the Consulate General, HE Ugo Boni, expressed the country’s commitment to fostering sustainability in the region.
With Italian Consulate General, HE Ugo Boni
Moreover, Green Growth Africa engaged with the German Government, through its Consulate General in Lagos and representatives from GIZ, the Nigerian-German Chamber of Commerce (NGCC), and AHK. Together, we explored collaboration opportunities in green skills, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture.
At Consulate General of Germany, Lagos
Sequel to Green Growth Africa’s engagement with the German Consulate in Lagos, the Consulate invited the Executive Director of Green Growth Africa among other youth-led organizations to engage with German State Secretary, Jennifer Morgan during her official visit to Nigeria.
With Jennifer Morgan, German State Secretary
We also paid courtesy visits to His Excellency, President Olusegun Obasanjo, where we engaged with him about our programmes and green growth concepts.
With His Excellency, President Olusegun Obasanjo
Indeed, 2024 was a year of breaking new grounds amidst so much more impact! We look forward to doing bigger strides and deepening the quality and numbers of our impact to fast-track the green and just transition in Africa with your support in 2025!!!
Don’t forget to follow us on social media at @greengrowthhub & @greengrowth_tv to stay up to date with the amazing work we are doing!
You can download our 2024 Impact Report below
Green Growth Africa_Annual Report 2024 
