Some have called for a Green Revolution in Africa. For instance. And another instance. I often wonder what exactly are they thinking? What do they mean by green? If it’s a clever ploy to get people excited interested in agriculture in Africa then I’m quite for that. If it’s to place some uniform bar of environmental restrictions on individuals, companies, and countries in Africa — it would meet fair bit of skepticism from me.

However to me, as an American, “Green” means none of these things. To me green is about altering your lifestyle and habits to be explicitly concious of your enviroment. And supporting ideas that hold industry accountable (think carbon emission credits; EPA fines) for their evironmental externalities (pollution). American Green is looking at the EnergyStar ratings, buying efflorescent lightbulbs, BYOB (bringing your own bag) for groceries, things like that.

Taken further Green is about building an evaporative cooling box, or having a multilayered bin of leftover food gobbling worms to ease your kitchen drain pipe and produce fertilizer. The latter is Thea’s new Christmas present and project for this year. The former, well, wait. It turns out to actually be derived from Africa.

The west African zeer pot uses evaporative cooling. Is the zeer pot part of the African Green “revolution”? It’s probably not on most people’s agenda. But it is so very green, just not trendy green, rather it is just one of the many many things that African use across that very large continent that strectches from vast desserts to giant waterfall, and everything in between and beyond.

After my Kiswahili lessons I would walk back the city centre of Nairobi along Kenyatta Ave. I’d walk and choke on the horrible exaust from all the cars. Walking this path it is very easy see the great pollution caused by unregulated or at least lightly regulated transporation standards. One could easy choke in black exhaust and completely miss the fact that the matatu with horrible emissions was packed to brim with people — not an SUV with one maybe two people. Furthermore, it was likely made and repaired maticulously from salvaged goods.

I am not saying that Africa cannot improve it’s environmental stance or that the only Green technologies in Africa should be African technologies. But what I think must be the starting point for any stance on green is that overall Africa is likely to already be the greenest of the green.

And American Green is learning common practices in Africa. And African Green is our true need to focus on global agriculture.