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Paper short abstract:

African folklore is under threat of extinction due to excessive reliance on Eurocentric approaches to modern challenges such as climate crisis in Africa. How can it be revived in the global era and most importantly, what is the role of new African literary artists in reconceptualising it?

Paper long abstract:

Despite being a cultural and knowledge reservoir of a people, when it comes to the examination of modern predicaments, such as climate change, folklore in most new African literary works is assigned the role of embellishment. The unrestrained reliance on Eurocentric paradigms/approaches to climate change by both new African writers and major critical works has been used to examine this phenomenon. In recent years, Afrocentric approach to climate change where a return to roots (folklore) is often promoted as a way out of climate crisis in Africa, surface in the academic sphere. However, there is generally a paucity of critical works demonstrating how African folklore can be reconfigured to address the African postcolonial reality (climate crisis in this context). Thus, this study examines The Disappointed Three by Adamu Usman Kyuka, one of the few new writers who have demonstrated that, even with the advent of globalization, African indigenous folklore plays a role in tackling the issue of climate change. This paper posits that new African literary writers must reconsider the role and function of folklore. Based on an analysis of the text, this study concludes that African folklore is dynamic and flexible. Through reconceptualization/reconfiguration, folkloric elements such as songs, myths and folktales that deal with the concept of the African environment have proven to be essential tools in addressing the question of climate change in Africa today.