International Women's Day 2026: Webinar spotlights young African women leaders in climate adaptation

Ahead of International Women's Day 2026, a 90-minute Zoom webinar is being staged to put young African women at the center of adaptation conversations. This session is aimed first at members of the African Youth Adaptation Network and intends to move beyond testimony: it will share practical tools, produce working-group outputs and create networking and mentoring links intended to drive youth-led adaptation collaborations.

International Women's Day 2026: a targeted forum for African youth leadership

What matters here is audience and agency: young women from Algeria, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Republic of Congo and South Africa are the featured voices. The program frames those voices against a stark baseline — women and children are 14 times more vulnerable than men — and centers on the constraints that amplify that gap: limited access to information, limited mobility, curtailed decision-making and restricted access to essential resources such as education, especially in Africa.

Event format and timing

The webinar will run for 90 minutes on Zoom and takes place ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday the 8th of March. Program elements listed for the session include an opening video titled "The Connection Between Gender and Climate, " opening remarks and welcome, a panel discussion and working groups. The session combines plenary panels with small-group work rather than a single lecture-style presentation.

Panel focus and working groups

The panel will feature young women from Algeria, South Africa, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Comoros and Morocco. Each panelist will describe how they entered the climate space and will outline challenges, needs, opportunities and recommendations for engaging women in the adaptation agenda. Working groups will collect experience and tools for youth leadership on gender in climate adaptation, producing practical outputs for participants.

Objectives, intended participants and organizational details

The stated objective is to disseminate practical tools, share lessons learned and create a platform for networking and mentoring that leads to concrete collaborations, capacity building and youth-led initiatives. The event is organized especially for the African Youth Adaptation Network, comprising 51 African countries as of 2026. For more information, contact Adriana Valenzuela, Youth Leadership and Education Team Lead. Chamber of commerce reg.: 76050475 RSIN: 860489644

Quick takeaways for attendees and partners

• Panelists from six African countries will foreground youth perspectives and pathways into climate work.
• Working groups aim to convert discussion into tangible tools and mentoring links.
• Session design emphasizes practical outputs for the African Youth Adaptation Network (51 countries as of 2026).
• Program framing stresses how limited information, mobility, decision-making and education magnify vulnerability for women and children.

Here’s the part that matters for anyone in the network: the format pairs shared stories with small-group, tool-focused work so outcomes can be applied locally rather than simply archived. The real question now is how those working-group outputs will be carried forward into ongoing mentoring, capacity building and youth-led initiatives across member countries.