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Paper short abstract:

Scholars have argued for African Ecocriticism that explores imaginative texts, and nature. This paper upholds African Ecocriticism also described as African Environmentalism drawing from a multiplicity of voices where the environment for the African is valued as sacred and not labeled the ‘other’.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the notion of African Ecocriticism which can as well be expressed as African Environmentalism drawing from Nigeria’s Niyi Osundare’s The Eye of the Earth (1986), Kenyan- Wangari Maathai’s Unbowed: A Memoir (2006), and South Africa- Zake Mda’s Heart of Redness (2006). Over time, African people have demonstrated a deep environmental sensibility that has created customs, songs, proverbs, myths, and taboos which can be observed in each community for harmonious living. Thus, in African environmentalism, the environment is esteemed as sacred and not categorized as ‘other’ as signified among industrialists, and supporters rather, it is a vital part of the African cultural world equilibrium. By so doing, African Ecocriticism circumscribes the extent to which African writers represent environmentalism in the contexts of African environments by focusing on African literary aesthetics and ecological wisdom. Also, African Ecocriticism opens up how the destructive upshot of resource exploitation, dispossession, and toxicity injure the precarious bionetwork of the impoverished African communities and their sources of existence. This paper explicates that African environmental consciousness responds to contemporary representations of eco-crisis through environmentally unequal practices under the lure of progress which marginalize African people and spaces. Appraising African environmentalism in the select works raises fundamental questions about African literature past, present, and future using distinct African environmental motifs and tropes. With the growing awareness of environmental issues in the twenty-first century, this paper brings to the fore the ways African eco-consciousness contributes to environmentalism and conservation amid the benefits, and craze for technological advancement.