Africa is where the world's environmental battles are being fought, and where many of the solutions are being built. Africa, Planet Frontline tells those stories from the field, through action and cooperation, never through crisis alone. Each episode starts with a concrete problem in a concrete place, a forest, a coastline, a river basin, a city, and follows a solution in progress, driven by African actors and joined by international partners who bring skills, investment and resolve.
Three questions shape every episode. What is Africa doing? How are international actors contributing? What form of cooperation is emerging, and who influences whom? The structure is the same each time, in four acts: the reality on the ground; the actors at the table, African and foreign, and what is at stake for each; the solution in action; and the global relevance, because what is decided in the Congo Basin or the Sahel is decided for the planet. Scientists, communities, ministries, foundations, development banks, multinationals and governments, China, the European Union, the United States, the Gulf, appear as they are: parties to a negotiation.
Twice a month, twenty-six minutes of documentary reporting. The pilot goes to the Congo Basin: science, power and the future of the forest.
01 — Congo Basin: Science, Power and the Future of the Forest — The second lung of the planet, the scientists who measure it, the states that own it, the funds that pay to keep it standing: who decides the forest's future. Pilot.
02 — The Great Green Wall — Senegal, Niger, Ethiopia: land restored hectare by hectare, the communities who plant, the donors who pay, and the distance between the promise and the ground.
03 — Cooking Without Smoke — Kenya and Ghana: clean cooking at scale, the carbon credits that finance it, and the international alliances behind a domestic revolution.
04 — The Conservancy — Namibia and Kenya: wildlife as a community asset, tourism revenue, foreign conservation money, and who owns the land the animals live on.
05 — Mangroves and Money — Senegal and Mozambique: coastlines replanted, blue carbon sold abroad, and the question of who profits from a restored shore.
06 — The World's Wardrobe Ends in Accra — Kantamanto market: the second-hand clothing Europe and America ship to Ghana, the waste it leaves, and the recyclers building an answer with international partners.
07 — Who Fishes Africa's Seas? — Senegal and Mauritania: foreign fleets, fishing agreements with the European Union and China, and the surveillance and community fisheries that push back.
08 — Seeds for a Hotter Sahel — Drought-resistant crops from Mali to Kenya: the research centres, the foundations that fund them, and the farmers who decide whether they work.
09 — The Carbon Market — Kenya, Zimbabwe, Liberia: Africa's carbon credits, the Gulf and Western buyers, and the rules being written elsewhere. Who profits from Africa's carbon?
10 — Cities Under Water — Dakar, Lagos, Nairobi: floods, heat and the adaptation projects financed by development banks and city networks. What protection costs, and who pays.
11 — The Dam and the River — A river basin shared between countries: hydropower, irrigation, fisheries, and the international mediators, engineers and financiers who shape the compromise.
12 — Africa at the Table — Season synthesis at the year's climate summit: how African negotiators work, with whom, and what the loss-and-damage and adaptation funds actually deliver.