Profile: Achieford Mhondera

32, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

“I am a climate activist advocating for the rights of indigenous communities and people. I am a climate change researcher focusing on the rights of indigenous people and local communities. I contributed to a program we called the Browning of the Earth soil where we planted more than 200 fertilizer trees on a one hectare space as an experiment on how to replenish the degraded soils. The experiment with plant species such as leucaena ended up being considered as a learning point by schools in our area. To this day the concept is cascading to other nearby districts under the New Brown to Green Again project. More trees are being planted and agroforestry is now being adopted as a way of farming in my area due to that. I popularized this by advocating for the revisit of indigenous agricultural knowledge.”