PRESS RELEASE
Africa’s first Collaborative Online International Learning course on Climate Change and Sustainability Education was launched by 10 African Universities on 10th February 2025
CESDA, the Centre for Education and Sustainable Development, a network of African universities focused on Sustainability Education, is proud to announce that Africa’s first undergraduate COIL course on Climate Change and Sustainability went live on 10th February 2025.
The concept for the course was announced by CESDA Secretary Prof Jackline Nyerere from Kenyatta University in the Africa and Kenyan pavilions at COP28 in Dubai on the Education Day, December 8th 2023. During the last year, a team of academics chaired by Prof Nashiru Sulemana from Ghana have put the 12 week course together. It consists of 6 integrated modules, including a series of interactive discussion groups and Africa-based case studies, designed to empower students to think deeply about their place and their role in addressing climate change and sustainability challenges.
It has many unique elements:
- It will be offered to African students of all academic disciplines.
- It requires students to engage with local communities to co-create practical solutions to the challenges of climate change and sustainable development within their own communities and environment.
- It promotes collaboration and dialogue between students across the whole African continent, to share analyses and to seek common solutions, wherever possible.
- It is free.
- It is the first course of this sort, and hopefully will spawn similar initiatives worldwide.
Conscious that producing such a course in an immense challenge, the first course will be a run as a pilot exercise, prior to being reviewed and reformulated where necessary and then rolled out on a wider scale across the Africa.
150 students have been selected by the 10 universities for this pilot run. The demand for places has massively exceeded the supply (the number of available places for registration was oversubscribed by a factor of 10, despite the very short time within which the course was advertised). This shows the remarkable level of interest from students that this course has generated.
The course is one of the legacy education projects that emerged from the African Year of Education 2024, and was presented at a high level Continental Education conference hosted by the Africa Union in Mauritania from December 9th-11th 2024.
It is also fully in line with the COP 29 ‘Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience’, which focuses on ‘catalysing investment in education, skills, health, and well-being, in particular for children and youth …and enhancing environmental literacy through education standards.’
Implementation of the pilot is funded by Gower Street Foundation.
For further information please contact:
Professor Jackline Nyerere, Senior Lecturer of Educational Leadership and Policy, Director, Centre for International Programmes and Collaboration, Kenyatta University, Kenya; Secretary, Center for Education and Sustainable Development in Africa (CESDA). +254 7286521232
Kenyatta University, Kenya; University of Nairobi, Kenya; Kisii University, Kenya; Kenya Methodist University, University of Zambia, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, University of Ghana; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana; University for Development Studies, Ghana; Emmanuel Alayande University of Education, Nigeria
Annex 1
The CESDA Flyer for the course
