OK, I don’t know how to put this down correctly, so this post will look a bit bleh.
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I don’t think that the Green movement will get that much foothold in Africa, at least not in the near future.
Right now, the dominant political parties in the countries’ parliaments and executive mansions espouse (at least on paper) some common threads: Pan-Africanism, religious conservatism, nationalism, and populism.
Also, most of these countries’s demographies, because of the history of cross-continental dialogue between Africa and Europe, tend to be averse to any political ideology or social cause of a supposed Western origin: anarchism, environmentalism, civil rights for LGBT citizens, etc.
The only case of an African “Green party” that is enjoying any publicity is the Mazangiri Green Party of Kenya, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who is an ally of the current (disputed) president Mwai Kibaki.
Heck, even the Green political movement in South Africa has taken a turn for the worse in the post-apartheid era. From the Wikipedia suggestion, most Greens in South Africa are currently allied with either the ANC or the DA, primarily because of how the most outstanding (token) environmental excesses of the apartheid regimes, including nuclear weapons and power, were cleaned up or scaled down by the Mandela government.
Perhaps the most outstanding issue, however, in South Africa and most of sub-Saharan Africa, is the rise of AIDS/HIV, something that no national Green party has similarly incorporated to the very top of their political agenda (except for this; see if YOU can find the reference to AIDS/HIV in all that text). While Africa is scared as hell about this epidemic and its effects on their populations, livelihoods, and media images, most Green parties are more concerned with the prevention of nuclear power, whaling, or other matters which are of less populistic appeal to the electorates.
I would like to see that change, as I will either vote for a Libertarian or Green in November, but the lack of Green participation in national and local government in Africa is worrying to me.
That was very informative.
The most progressive programs I hear to come out of Africa are certainly the Sexual education programs, because NPR has done segments on them. I could totally understand how in Africa people are more concerned with survival than they are about conservation and preservation.