Q&A: Climate leaders with answers

Cynthia Makunganya is a regional business director at Burn Manufacturing in charge of marketing and operations for electric pressure and induction cookers. 

Q: What media best describes Africa’s climate crisis? A: The movie ‘The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind’. No spoiler alert, but basically inventiveness and youth can create change.

Q: What country in Africa should outsiders visit to learn about its climate? A: I am from Malawi but have lived in Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. We feel the effects of deforestation everywhere.

Q: What climate action have you taken recently? A: We started a reforestation project in my home village Mulanje and have since planted a thousand trees. They have a 70-80% survival rate, which has been really promising and we intend to plant more each year.

Q: Who is your greatest role model in climate action? A: Collectively, my family. We were able to get a majority of the youth in our clan involved in the reforestation project. 

Q: What is your earliest memory of the climate crisis? A: The floods of December 2005 and January 2006 in Malawi when more than 40,000 households were affected or destroyed.