AKU: An African Journal of Contemporary Research

While scientific and policy accounts are key to situating Africa's environmental crises, they are insufficient for capturing the cultural, ethical, and affective dimensions of ecological change. In this article, I analyze environmental storytelling in African literature and the arts as embodied ecological imagination and public critique. Using African ecocriticism, postcolonial environmental humanities, and the environmental justice movement, I examine oral traditions, literary forms, the visual arts and performing arts, and the Niger Delta as an archive of ecological storytelling. A close reading of Helon Habila's Oil on Water demonstrates how the storytelling practices of fragmented narratives, polluted spaces, and bodily vulnerability render the violence of resource extraction (and the effects of the violence) felt and experienced, as opposed to measurable and quantifiable. I contend that African environmental storytelling is beyond representational; it connects the perception of the environment to an understanding of the past, and it amplifies the voice of the dispossessed in the community, and it aids in creating a more equitable community and environmentally just world.

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