Wangui wa Kamonji
Wangui wa Kamonji is called to be a retriever and bearer of indigenous Afrikan lifeways and practices for the regeneration of the continent. This manifests through research using academic and indigenous methods, Afrikan dance and movement practice, storytelling in written and oral forms, and facilitating public spaces for critical consciousness, decolonisation and transformation.
Environmental issues she has worked on include the spirituality of nature, ecological histories in conflict zones, resistance to coal industry, indigenous women’s seed restoration, and ecologically sound urban waste cycles in Kenya, local responses to oil production in Uganda, and agroecological alternatives to international agribusiness in Kenya and Tanzania. She was part of the inaugural FRIDA Climate and Environmental Justice Fellowship researching and writing multimedia pieces on the intersections of gender and climate justice in East Afrika.
Her current research is a decolonial project exploring Earth-centred governance, regenerative justice, Afrikan spirituality, life-centred economics, holistic education and food sovereignty as pathways to regeneration through the wisdom encoded in indigenous Afrikan ontologies (ways of being, knowing and doing).
Wangui is hearth keeper of the collective Afrika hai, which researches, reconnects to and reimagines indigenous African ways of being, knowing and doing, and convene spaces to share these to enable healing of colonial violence and trauma, and creation and control of presents and futures that work towards life for Earth, society and ancestors. As a regeneration collective and movement driver we create and facilitate programmes that invite the public into alternative ways of being, knowing and doing that rethink current world systems and reimagine a thriving world for all as a decolonising practice. Wangui has a Masters in African Studies with Environment, and a Bachelors in Environmental Studies and Urban Studies.
