Abstract In this article, Melania Chiponda, a long-time activist on mining, gender, and energy issues in Africa, describes the roots of her work in grass-roots struggles led by women to protect their lands, environment, and livelihoods against resource extraction. While many accounts of the history of the just transition movement show it emerging from Northern trade union and environmental movements, Melania’s narrative, as well as excerpts from her related publications, remind us that grass-roots women at the front lines of energy extraction in Africa have long been fighting for justice around mining, climate, and related issues, yet these accounts are often relatively invisible in the global narrative and the now massive literature on just transitions. This article helps to fill this gap. A short, selective reading list of other articles written by African women relevant to just transition is provided for those who want to pursue this theme further.
Resumen En este artículo, Melania Chiponda, activista de larga trayectoria en temas de minería, género y energía en África, describe los orígenes de su trabajo en las luchas de base lideradas por mujeres para proteger sus tierras, su entorno y sus medios de vida frente a la extracción de recursos. Aunque muchos de los relatos sobre la historia del movimiento por la transición justa muestran que el mismo surgió de sindicatos y movimientos ambientales del Norte global, la narrativa de Melania, junto con extractos de sus publicaciones relacionadas, nos recuerda que las mujeres organizadas en las comunidades directamente afectadas por la extracción energética en África llevan mucho tiempo luchando por la justicia en torno a la minería, el clima y cuestiones conexas. Sin embargo, estos relatos suelen permanecer invisibilizados dentro de la narrativa global y de la ahora vasta literatura que circula sobre transiciones justas. Este testimonio contribuye a llenar ese vacío. Para quienes deseen profundizar en este tema, se ofrece una breve y selectiva lista de lecturas de otros artículos escritos por mujeres africanas relevantes para la transición justa.
Resumo Neste artigo, Melania Chiponda, activista de longa data em questões da mineração, do género e da energia em África, descreve as origens do seu trabalho em torno das lutas comunitárias conduzidas por mulheres para proteger as suas terras, o ambiente e os meios de subsistência contra a exploração de recursos. Embora muitos relatos sobre a história do movimento da transição justa mostrem a sua emergência a partir de movimentos sindicais e ambientais do Norte, a narrativa de Melania, bem como excertos das suas publicações relacionadas, recordam-nos que mulheres de base, na linha da frente da extracção de energia em África, têm lutado há muito tempo por justiça em torno da mineração, do clima e de questões relacionadas; entretanto, estes relatos permanecem em grande medida invisíveis na narrativa global e na vasta literatura actualmente existente sobre transições justas. Este relato contribui para colmatar essa lacuna. É apresentada uma curta lista selectiva de outros artigos escritos por mulheres africanas, relevantes para a transição justa, para aqueles que desejem aprofundar mais este tema.
Keywords gender justice, just transition, extractivism, energy poverty, feminist climate activism, community-led renewable energy, critical minerals.
I always say to people that ‘feminism found me’ so I will start with where my feminism was kindled. When I started work as a very energetic young person in 1995, my first job was working with women farmers in Zimbabwe. I would see how the women were really depressed when the rains didn’t come or when there were floods. I started relating their stories to my time living with my grandmother; similarly if the rains were not coming, she would not sleep, and she would feel so depressed.
And then I became so passionate about the work women were doing, and I started asking questions. How come a very good farmer in Zimbabwe will be given a certificate on which is written ‘Master Farmer’? In the families that I worked with, most of the farmers were women, because men would be working in urban areas. The men would go to the cities to work, but when harvest came, they would just come and get the money, because they would sell to the grain marketing board, or to the cotton marketing board, and these boards would register the farmer as the man who was considered the head of the household.
I started questioning that kind of injustice and linking it to my grandmother’s experience. My grandfather was an activist who resisted colonial taxation and occupation in Zimbabwe. He went away to South Africa to work in the mines. My grandmother stayed behind and farmed. She fed a family of six boys and one girl on her own, sending the children to school through her farm work. But when she received the Master Farmer card, it had my grandfather’s name on it, despite him not being there for many years. Then when my grandfather came back, the cattle and wealth that my grandmother had accumulated belonged to him. I remember questioning those things. And so I became passionate about this injustice.
In the early 1990s, I started interacting with a group from Binga in Matabeleland North in Zimbabwe. Binga is considered the poorest district in the country. At that time, the Binga people were often accused of being lazy and of just wanting to smoke weed. However, sitting down with them, I learned their stories. When the mega Kariba Hydro Dam was constructed, their land and rivers were taken away from them, and they lost relatives when there was a big flood there in the 1950s. From this I realised that everybody is wrong about them. These people have a story to tell of the injustice of the energy system in Zimbabwe. They spoke of how they were displaced because of energy infrastructure, but they don’t have energy themselves. They don’t even have roads. They have nothing. They are considered the poorest, and they are still carrying the trauma of their displacement. When I asked the women, ‘Why are you not farming?’, one of the older women said,
We want to work, but this land they gave us is not conducive for farming. It is arid, infertile, and not intended for human habitation but for animals. We believe the Zambezi River is our river. It belongs to us, and it was forcibly taken away from us. We believe we deserve the energy that is generated from the Kariba Dam.
My work in Matabeleland also led me to understand the stories of the Hwange Colliery where there was an accident in the mines in the early 1970s, which caused the deaths of around 500 people, and how the widows of the miners have been living in abject poverty ever since.5 The land is so polluted there that you don’t even need to be told that you are approaching it because of the smell, the coal dust, and because everything in Hwange is polluted.
I started thinking there is something wrong with this kind of development. There is something wrong with the energy sector itself. There is something very wrong when we have electricity for production but no electricity for the people, particularly when the people who face the severest impacts of energy production live in energy poverty and extreme deprivation. I learned that this kind of development is called ‘extractivism’. I realised extraction of anything is bad, whether it is extraction of water, or extraction of mineral resources. I realised climate change severely impacts women because their lives are tied to the land, through caring for their families, for their environment; because women are the ones who are producing the food on the land.
If the rivers are poisoned as in Hwange, how are people going to produce food and perform their day-to-day care and household work? Surely the system is not right, where women from a very young age are growing up having to carry heavy loads of firewood for household and community needs. I used to think that as people age they start coughing, and then I realised, no, they are not supposed to be coughing. It is the lung infections they are getting due to inhaling all these dirty fumes coming from using dirty sources of energy. My experience with all this is intertwined with seeing the injustice in the energy sector, seeing this injustice happening again in the extractives industry, and seeing how the extractives projects are the biggest consumers of energy. Even when the government established the rural electrification programme in Zimbabwe in 1983, the areas supported included commercial farms and mines because they fall within the rural jurisdictions. So, as the government was saying, ‘We have electrified rural areas’, I would say, ‘No, that’s a lie. They have electrified the mines. They have electrified the commercial farms, but the people who are farming don’t have access to electricity. There’s no electricity there.’
I was taken in for being a public nuisance.
I became very active in saying the mines should close. That was my very first slogan. Mining should stop because the minerals are not benefiting the people who are hosting the minerals. And then I connected with other activists in the region and the energy sector itself. I met with very powerful sisters like Makoma Lekalakala of Earthlife Africa (see Earthlife Africa n.d.), Emem Okon of Nigeria, and others. We used to call ourselves ‘sisters by choice’. We were not just organising against the fossil-fuels industry, we were also organising against extraction, because we were working with people affected by platinum mining and people affected by coal mining, as well as other mining in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
I remember we organised a trip to go to Marikana, South Africa in 2012, going as people who were affected by the extractives in Zimbabwe. The visit was organised with Bench-Marks in solidarity with the communities and the workers there (see Bench-Marks Foundation n.d.). Their families were suffering, so they had organised to make demands for salaries. The police opened fire on the workers who were staging a sit-in in August 2012 in Marikana. That was when I realised organising against corporations is very dangerous.6
The Marikana massacre happened during the time that we were resisting diamond mining in Zimbabwe. We had started organising and building an anti-extractive movement from 2007 when the Government of Zimbabwe announced that they would forcibly move people to pave the way for diamond mining. In June 2008, for organising the women, I was arrested under the Public Order and Security Act which criminalised holding unsanctioned meetings in public. I was taken in for holding an ‘illegal’ meeting, then I was taken in for being a public nuisance, and finally I was taken in for undermining the Office of the President. But some of the Zimbabwe human rights lawyers would say, ‘You are anti‑mining. How is that a human rights issue?’. They couldn’t connect the dots.
In 2013, I responded to a call by the International Accountability Project (IAP) to carry out Participatory Action Research that could be used to influence the World Bank’s safeguard policy,7 which was then under review. I travelled to Washington DC and New York for participatory research training, sponsored by IAP and provided by their Global Advocacy Team.
There I met with seven more activists who were all fighting the extractive industry and harmful, mega development projects including energy projects, and who were looking for climate solutions. I met a woman from the Philippines who was fighting projects that were purported to be protecting communities against typhoons. She was saying that typhoons are climate change induced, and that to address climate change, the projects needed to stop polluting. Her narrative and my narrative connected. I also met someone from Mongolia where Rio Tinto was grabbing land from the nomads.8 I related how Rio Tinto had also invested in Zimbabwe in the diamond mines. I asked, ‘Where do people complain if they are harmed by World Bank-funded projects?’.
I attended the World Bank annual meeting together with the activist from the Philippines and we stayed together, questioning the dominant development narrative being pushed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It was my first time demonstrating in Washington DC, demanding renewable energy for all, drawing on the stories that I was bringing with me from Zimbabwe and Africa as a continent.
I conducted Participatory Action Research, using it as a way of organising and movement building, and used popular education as a way of building women’s knowledge about the impacts of extractivism and to raise critical consciousness. After the Participatory Action Research, we put together our stories in a report entitled Back to Development – A Call for What Development Could Be (IAP and Global Advocacy Team 2015).
At first, people didn’t think of just transition as a feminist issue.
I come from a background with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, but some years ago in Zimbabwe there was not much discussion about ‘just transition’. I started hearing the term from the unions when I was engaging with workers in South Africa around 2013–14. My understanding at the time was that it was intended to protect the workers when the mines closed in terms of the demands for renewable energy.
But when I started hearing about it, I remember asking some of the workers,
Are you saying that women are not supposed to be protected? We have farmers who are facing even more severe harm. We know you need to protect your jobs, but if the mines close, how are women going to be protected? The women lost their lands because of the coal mines and now they have diversified their livelihoods. A lot of the women are working in the informal sector. How are they going to be protected as well?
That was the first question I asked in the very first meeting in South Africa. I said, ‘I think there’s something missing in the just transition debates’.
We started talking about a just transition; we had organised ourselves across the region. We had people coming from Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta, from Senegal, from Kenya, from South Africa, from Mozambique, from Zambia, and from Egypt. That is when I connected the demand to stop fossil fuels. I connected with so many people that at some point we had a group of 14 countries.
I started working for WoMin in 20169 and that is when we began the Women Building Power programme (WoMin 2024) (see Box 1). I remember discussing with my then boss that we needed to work as a movement: ‘This work is not going to happen if we work at the policy level, we need to be with the people in the movements.’
My vision was that if we would all come together to stop fossil‑fuel extraction, we could all transition in a just way. We would meet in Mozambique and Kenya. When the DeCOALonize Kenya campaign started (DeCOALonize n.d.), I was on the steering committee working with the sisters from Lamu (Save Lamu 2017). In that case, I thought it was not very wise for us to just demand stopping the coal power plant in Lamu. We also needed to go to the source where the coal would be extracted. So we visited and strengthened the organising capacity of the women in Kitui County in Kenya and told them to resist. At that time, we were resisting coal in so many places in South Africa, Senegal, and Kenya. The plan for the Kenyan coal power plant was shelved. During that same period, we were also pushing in the DR Congo to stop the Inga 3 hydropower plant (International Rivers n.d.).
And then the same year, in 2016, we said, ‘Let us meet and talk about what a feminist just transition would look like.’ Twelve people from across Africa met to ask what the principles should be that should guide the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. We affirmed that we need to protect the human rights of women. We need minimum safeguards. We need to protect our environment. We do not want extractivism. That was the cross‑cutting issue – that whatever energy system would be adopted, it should not be extractive. That was the first formal meeting we had to talk about a feminist just energy transition.
But even before that, I remember trying to convince people that the most important challenge that we were facing is climate change. People were asking me, ‘Mela, are you a feminist or you are an environmentalist? Who are you?’. I said, ‘I am not boxing myself in.’ I remember saying to the sister, ‘I don’t do environmentalism. I do environmental justice, and this is a justice issue.’ At first, people didn’t think of just transition as a feminist issue or a women’s rights issue.
In Uganda, we were working with NAWAD (National Association for Women’s Action in Development) (NAWAD n.d.) and NAPE (National Association of Professional Environmentalists) (NAPE n.d.) to organise women to resist moves by the Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium to explore and extract oil in their villages (see Muriisa and Twinamasiko 2020). We held several meetings with women in Hoima, Bulisa, and other areas in the oil fields. We did our first energy assembly in Hoima in 2016 which brought together more than a hundred women from all over the oil region, and we discussed the energy system that we do not want and the one that we do want. I would say that was the initial process that we took to start discussions on community-led, women‑driven energy transitions.
Trying to stop oil was a very dangerous part of my activism. We organised a grass-roots women’s meeting in Uganda for women saying ‘no’ to the EACOP (East African Crude Oil Pipeline) (EACOP n.d.), and saying let us move to renewable energy. We were bringing the politics of energy transitions to community women. And I realised that was extremely dangerous. The meeting there was quite successful, but with a lot of questions from people, and with some people saying ‘No, it’s our time to develop.’ But I asked people, ‘Why do you assume that we are supposed to take the development route of Europe? We are not Europeans. The energy systems that we are holding on to so much were not even designed by us.’
The Women Building Power programme The Women Building Power programme is an initiative of WoMin, a pan-African ecofeminist alliance. The programme supports community, and specifically, women’s resistance to mega energy projects, with a specific focus on fossil fuels and large hydro dams. In 2016, the programme provided information booklets on women and energy, including what women could do ‘to deal with the daily challenges of energy poverty and organise in their communities for the wider changes needed to deal with energy and climate justice’ (WoMin n.d.). In addition, the WoMin African Gender and Extractives Alliance published one of the first far-reaching reports on gender and energy justice in Africa: Women Building Power: Towards Climate and Energy Justice for Women in Africa, and co-authored by Melania Chiponda, along with Dorothy Guerrero and Samantha Hargreaves. The conclusion shared their vision of a gender just transition:
[We] call for energy justice and a total transformation of the energy system. We highlight that the current energy system is unequal, unjust, leads to energy poverty, and has to change. Climate justice activists refer to some of the shifts we are calling for as the ‘just transition’. WoMin brings an explicit feminist orientation to the needed development transition, calling for a gender just transition. WoMin’s call for a gender just transition is being further clarified and advanced through a women’s rights, women-led and grass-roots-driven regional campaign. The campaign aims to support women’s movement building and organising towards a future in which African women enjoy climate, energy, food, gender, and development justice. It seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and to work on a range of levels. (2016: 41)
Requirements for an ‘Energy Transformation Approach’ include the following:
- A just transition away from fossil fuels and to a new energy system which prioritises ending energy poverty for the majority of African women and their families in ways that respect and protect people, environments, and the planet.
- The prioritisation of the needs and interests of women and men in households and communities, and not the interests of private corporations such as the mining industry.
- Energy democracy, ensuring poor people’s and especially poor women’s participation in planning and oversight of energy decision-making. This requires support to women’s organising, actions, and a shake-up of male power at the household, community, and national levels.
- Women’s participation at all levels of the renewable energy sector, and not just a few elite women acting for corporations or political parties.
- Shifting external costs of energy production to the producers and away from women who currently bear this burden.
- Addressing human rights abuses and conflict related to energy injustice, including climate change-related conflicts, which worsen existing gender inequalities and create more violence and insecurity for women and girls (ibid. 2016: 40).
Colonialism brought an energy transition – unjust, colonial, and for the colonisers.
The biggest problem which I’m seeing in the global climate movement, in the just transition discussion, is that it is assumed that Europe is supposed to transition us. Of course, it is only just for them to pay reparations and fund the ‘just transition’ if it is going to be just.
So there is the issue of the colonised and the colonisers. Energy transitions are not anything new to the continent. Before the coming of colonialism and of Western capitalism to the African continent, people had their existing energy systems for the work they used to do, whether within the household economy or in the community economies. But then there was indeed a transition from the pre-colonial energy systems to the colonial energy systems.
We have energy systems that were never intended for the natives, whether it’s in Zimbabwe, or in another African country, or in India that was also a British colony. It was intended for the colonial administration and for the production to happen in Europe. The coal in Zimbabwe was mined to finance industry in Europe. Therefore, it is only just for the people that benefited from the extraction of our coal to fund the transition that is going to happen in Zimbabwe, so that Zimbabwe can also develop, and so that any other African country can also have access to renewable energy.
Transition is not going to be just, if it is driven by extractivism or control.
For me, it seems unjust for our countries to increase their debt as they transition. There is no justice at the government level in Africa. There is no justice for women, because we know that every time our governments are unable to fund social services because of debt repayment, it is women who carry the burden. Women carry the burden of broken health-care systems. They carry the burden of broken education systems. They carry the burden of broken water energy systems. Therefore, I believe it is hypocritical for funders to say ‘Oh, we are funding women’s rights’ if you are not funding a just transition. South Africa has been colonised and has been under apartheid for more than 300 years of extraction. Why should the South Africans carry the burden of funding their transition? If our governments are going to have to borrow then that transition is not just. Transition is not going to be just if it is driven by extractivism or by control.
Yes, we want to transition, but we do not want to reproduce extractivism, and this is quite evident in the way that the people in Matabeleland North do not want another Kariba Dam because it is very harmful. It is a mega hydro. At one point, it was the biggest human-made water body globally. People don’t like it. People don’t like the mega Inga 3 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They don’t like it. This is why there is a lot of resistance to harvesting water. We have seen it in terms of the friction between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.10.
The transition should not be transitioning to something we are fighting against. We don’t want to transition to mega dams. We don’t want to transition to extractives. When the women in Kariba are saying ‘We don’t want this mega dam, it did a lot of harm to us’, they are not saying they don’t want electricity. They want electricity, but they do not like the way the electricity is being produced and how it is harmful to them and how it is imposed (Mehta and Srinivasan 2000).
We want to do it differently in ways that would protect rights and the environment. We don’t want to displace people because we want to introduce solar farms. Our transition would be quite different from the ways that we hear. Because to a lot of people, transitioning is just closing the mines and opening new energy infrastructure.
Lithium mining in Bikita
Bikita District is located in the northeast Masvingo Province of Zimbabwe. The Bikita Lithium Mine (BLM) has been in operation since 1911, initially focused on mining tin, then petalite lithium ore in the 1950s. In 2016, the mine resumed spodumene exploration, driven by the rising demand for lithium in electric vehicle (EV) batteries (AIDC 2025). Bikita Minerals is owned by the Chinese company, Sinomine Resource Group, who purchased the mine from African Minerals Ltd for US$180m in January 2022. Bikita Minerals is also exploring the potential for additional lithium reserves in the surrounding lands.
In 2024, the SHINE Collab and the Global Initiative on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, published Women on the Frontlines of the Extraction of Transition Minerals: A Vision for a Just Future in Bikita, Zimbabwe. As they write:
The workshop involved the participation of eleven Indigenous women from the Vatombe community of the Hanyanya Mountain, a rural area in the Bikita District of Zimbabwe. Additionally, during the discussions, two women from the community of Marange in the Mutare District of Zimbabwe also participated in the debate and shared their experiences ... with diamond mining. (Rochi Monagas et al. 2024: ii)
The full report places the drive for transition minerals in the historical context of colonialism and extractivism in Africa, while also pointing to the new challenges brought on by the search for critical minerals, including the violation of global human rights related to access to land and water, free and prior consent, labour rights, and care. The report concludes:
The evidence gathered through this research demonstrates that the rush for critical transition minerals like lithium threatens to replicate colonial patterns of resource extraction, where benefits flow primarily to external actors whilst local communities — particularly women – bear disproportionate costs…
The women of Hanyanya offer a compelling alternative vision for development — one rooted in sustainable agriculture, community autonomy and the preservation of traditional lands and practices. Their perspective challenges us to question whether the intensive extraction of transition minerals truly serves the goal of building a more equitable, sustainable world. Their experiences and insights demonstrate that technical solutions to climate change cannot come at the expense of human rights and gender equality. (ibid.: 48
You are not supposed to do injustice so that you can fund justice elsewhere.
We are now working in Bikita District, Zimbabwe where lithium mining is expanding to fuel clean energy in other countries (see Box 2). Zimbabwe hosts the largest lithium deposits on the continent, and now there is a rush for lithium, since it is a mineral that is considered ‘critical’ (Global Witness 2023).
We are organising women to say ‘No, we do not want the expansion of lithium mines into our territories.’ They must organise themselves because the investors are getting our lands and territories for a song. They are not paying anything. They get free land. And in the process, they also take the rivers, the community water sources, and yet we call them ‘investors’. I struggle with the idea that we call people investors who are just coming to loot resources and are stockpiling lithium in their countries. It is going in its raw form, and the communities are having to live with the devastation in their rivers and on their lands when the mines close.
We cannot do harm in Bikita, closing the coal mines and expanding lithium mining, so that they can have a just transition in South Africa. It is not supposed to work like that, right? There is supposed to be a just transition at the point where the critical minerals are being extracted, and there is supposed to be justice where the mines are closing. But right now it seems the focus is on justice where the mines are closing, and nobody’s really talking about doing justice at the source of the minerals which are needed by the renewable energy sector.
Women-driven, women-informed, women-centred, decentralised renewable energy systems to build resilient local economies.
The same system is reproducing itself. SHINE Collab is talking to communities that we are working with about how they feel about that. We have an opportunity of bringing together the groups that were affected by the Kariba Dam and the communities that are now hosting lithium mining. The same system that allows for involuntary displacement of people, the taking over of community territories, the harm that is done on the ecosystems and on women’s bodies, on their rivers, on their communities, is the same system that is now reproducing itself within the lithium mines in Zimbabwe.
Communities are challenging how their knowledge systems are being destroyed and being disregarded, and why the historical injustice that happened in those areas where energy development is taking place has never been addressed. And then here we are. We are now going into another phase of energy transition, and the biggest question is ‘At what point are we going to look at the knowledge and the alternatives to the energy crisis that the communities have? That the indigenous people, the women have?’ We need to start talking with them before we even make decisions to extract and before we make decisions to displace them.
What are the alternatives? What is the alternative energy system that the communities would like to see? We have been talking about decentralised renewable energy for a very long time. But what does it look like? Resources permitting, we are piloting a model that we can showcase and say, go and see what has been done in Bikita and see if this can be replicated in other areas. For us, Bikita is a learning space.
The SHINE Collab wants the resourcing of women-driven, women-informed, women-centred, decentralised renewable energy systems to build resilient local economies; we are not just looking at doing it in Bikita. We want to be able to replicate it, so we want to build our knowledge there. We are building knowledge together with the women to see what works, what doesn’t work, and then going into another community to say, this has worked, but this may not work here, we will see because this is a different context. We don’t want to reproduce the one-size-fits-all approach, but we want to continue building our knowledge.
This is an opportunity to say, as we are transitioning, what about decentralised renewable energy systems that can meet the needs of communities? We can build very stable local economies through listening to women and responding to their needs. And with investment in the national grid, we can also invest in local renewable energy systems. As we are doing this, we don’t want to promote dependency because when we make communities depend on us, we take away their power. This is an opportunity to say, as we are transitioning, what about decentralised renewable energy systems that can meet the needs of communities?
We want to strengthen women-led power enterprises, but we also want to have a community of practice that brings together advocates and funders. Funders are so used to funding mainstream ideas because it’s easy. But funding activists like myself, who challenge the way funding is applied, who challenge the whole narrative on just transition, that’s not so easy. It means sitting down and getting to understand each other, to understand that this is where we are coming from, and this is where you are coming from.
1 This issue of the IDS Bulletin was supported in part by a Ford Foundation grant entitled ‘Learning at the Intersections of Just Transitions: Spaces for Engagement, Voices from the Margins and Cross-Sectoral Alliances in Resource-Rich Countries of the Global South’. The British Academy also provided earlier support for the project ‘Making Space for Dialogue on Just Transitions in Africa’s Oil and Gas Producing Regions’ (2022) which helped to lay the foundation for much of this work. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the funders.
2 Melania Chiponda, Director, SHINE Collab, Zimbabwe.
3 This article is based on an interview with Melania Chiponda by John Gaventa, 11 February 2025, as well as a presentation by Melania to an IDS seminar on ‘Just Transitions: Voices from the Frontlines’, 1 April 2025. Thanks to Jenny Edwards for editing the transcript for readability, and to Lisa VeneKlasen and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments. Reference notes have been added in some places to the oral testimony to provide further context.
4 See the SHINE website – Investing in Energy Access for All. SHINE mobilises partnerships, resources, and advocacy in support of women-led, community-based renewable energy enterprises and organises initiatives that enable gender and climate just solutions. Its vision is of a ‘true just transition that supports thriving local economies and protects our climate by enabling women and their communities’.
5 The Kamandama mine disaster took place on 6 June 1972 in the mining town of Hwange. A methane gas explosion caused the mine to collapse, trapping and killing 427 miners. It remains the worst mining disaster in the history of Zimbabwe (see Mutowekuziva n.d.)
6 ‘On 16 August 2012, the South African Police Service (SAPS) opened fire on a crowd of striking mineworkers at Marikana, in the North West Province. The police killed 34 mineworkers and left 78 seriously injured. Following the assault, 250 of the miners were arrested. This event was the culmination of an intense week-long protest in which the miners were demanding a wage increase at the Lonmin platinum mine in a wildcat strike (South African History Online 2013).
7 In 2013, the World Bank conducted a review and update of its safeguard policies. The review resulted in a new Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) being adopted in 2016 (see World Bank 2016).
8 See Austin (2019).
9 In 2016, Melania became the Climate and Energy Coordinator of WoMin, coordinating and managing climate and energy work in 14 African countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, DRC, Mozambique, and Ghana.
10 For further information see BBC (2023).
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Further reading
For those readers interested in learning more from the voices of African women working on issues of gender and just transition, the following is a compilation of relatively recent selected sources, most of which are available as open access. (Prepared with the assistance of Patronela Tshuma and Lisa VeneKlasen.)
Akina mama wa Africa (n.d.) 10 Decolonial Feminist Principles to Unlock Climate Finance in Africa! (accessed 7 July 2025)
Chamberlain, L. (2023) ‘The Value of Litigation to Women Environmental Human Rights Defenders in South Africa’, in C. Albertyn, M. Campbell, H. Alviar García, S. Fredman and M. Rodriguez De Assis Machado (eds), Feminist Frontiers in Climate Justice, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, DOI: 10.4337/9781803923796.00014 (accessed 7 July 2025)
Chipango, E.F. (2025) ‘Where Intersectional Feminism Doesn’t Fit: Energy Transition and Ubuntu Feminism?’, Energy Research & Social Science 119: 103853, DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103853 (accessed 7 July 2025)
Hannelie Du Toit, L.J. (2022) ‘African Women Utilizing Indigenous Knowledge in Ecological Care: A Nature-based Solutions Perspective’, African Thought: A Journal of Afro-Centric Knowledge 1.se2: 3–37 (accessed 7 July 2025)
Hargreaves, S. (2019) ‘Addressing Crisis and Building Counter Power through New African Ecofeminist Movement’, International Viewpoint, 30 August (accessed 9 June 2025)
Hargreaves, S.; Khan, L.; Mapondera, M.; Shamuyarira, W. and Walters, S. (2025) ‘A Critical Exploration of Pan‑African Ecofeminist Popular Education within WoMin’s Feminist Schools’, Studies in the Education of Adults: 1–20, DOI: 10.1080/02660830.2024.2445905 (accessed 7 July 2025)
Hone, C. (2024) ‘Elevating Women’s Voices in the Fight for Land Rights and Climate Justice: An Interview with Nzira Deus’, Women’s Learning Partnership, 5 June (accessed 9 June 2025)
Ibezim-Ohaeri, V. (2025) ‘Struggles for a Just Energy Transition in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Just for Whom?’, IDS Bulletin 56.2 DOI: 10.19088/1968-2025.139
Mathai, W. (2015) ‘Women’s Role in Energy Access Solutions to Climate Change’, in E. Chesler and T. McGovern (eds), Women and Girls Rising, London: Routledge
Merino, J. (2017) ‘Women Speak: Ruth Nyambura Insists on a Feminist Political Ecology’, MS Magazine, 15 November (accessed 9 June 2025)
Onyango, S. (2024) ‘Don’t Gas Africa is a Woman’s Blueprint for a Greener Continent’, Bird Story Agency, 29 February (accessed 26 June 2025)
Pereira, C. and Tsikata, D. (2021) ‘Extractivism, Resistance, Alternatives’, Feminist Africa 2.1: 1–13 (accessed 7 July 2025)
Rakatomalala (2018) ‘Madagascar’s Land Defenders Call for a Comprehensive Framework to Protect Malagasy Rights’, Global Voices, 23 December (accessed 23 June 2025)
Randriamaro, Z. (2018) Beyond Extractivism: Feminist Alternatives for a Socially and Gender Just Development in Africa, Feminist Reflections, Maputo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (accessed 1 July 2025)
Randriamaro, Z. and Hargreaves, S. (2019) Women Stand their Ground Against Big Coal: The AfDB Sendou Plant Impacts on Women in a Time of Climate Crisis, Research Report, LSD Africa, WoMin and Gender Action (accessed 20 March 2025)
The Planetary Press (2023) ‘From Anti-Apartheid Activist to Head of International Climate Powerhouse: Tasneem Essop is Leading the Fight for Climate Justice’, 28 March (accessed 26 June 2025)
Women’s Climate Assembly (2023) Declaration of the 2nd West and Central African Women’s Climate Assembly, 24‑28 September 2023, Lagos, Nigeria (accessed 7 July 2025)
© 2025 The Author. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2025.138 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 56 No. 2 November 2025 ‘Struggles for Justice in the Energy Transition: Voices from the Front Lines’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.