AfricaNow! November 26, 2025 Contextualizing COP30 & Remembering Jamil Abdullah al-Amin

Topics and Guests: The first part of AfricaNow! today is a focus on the annual UN Climate Change Conference which took place in Belém, Brazil .  The conference was scheduled from November 10 until November 20, 2025, and it was the 30th annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP29) of the 1992 UN climate agreement (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC]). The agreement was put into force in 1994—31 years ago this year.  The COP30 conference ended a day later than scheduled.  At the end Global South was able to have in the final agreement triple the funds in adapting its infrastructure to handle the impacts of extreme weather but those funds will not be fully in until 2035.   The final agreement also stated that the phase out of fossil fuels will be voluntary with countries putting in place their own roadmap for that initiative.  Many environmental activists saw this as a setback in the climate change struggle. 

To begin the process of unpacking COP30, the show features a brief conversation with Mithika Mwenda, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance who is based in Nairobi.  Mithika Mwenda contextualizes the recent annual climate change conference COP30–looking at demands of those countries most impacted by climate change, the outcomes of COP30 and more.

AfricaNow! remembers Black freedom fighter Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) who joined the ancestors on November 23 (October 4, 1943–November 23, 2025) Featured is a portion of a show from our archives with writer Arun Kundanani (AfricaNow! August 7, 2024 The Political Praxis of Jamil Abdullah al-Amin https://soundcloud.com/africanowonline/africanow-aug-7-2024-the-political-praxis-of-jamil-abdullah-al-amin).  Arun Kundanani, a writer interested in race, Islamophobia, surveillance, political violence, and radicalism. The conversation explores the political praxis of Jamil al-Amin.  The evolution of H. Rap Brown into Jamil al-Amin provides a rich and vital lens through which we can understand the Black freedom movement in more ways than we can account for.  Arun Kundanani is the author of What is Antiracism? (published by Verso Books, 2023), The Muslims are Coming! (Verso Books, 2014) and The End of Tolerance (published by Pluto Press, 2007), which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year. He has written for the Nation, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept to name a few outlets. Arun Kundanani has been a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a former editor of the journal Race & Class, the quarterly journal of the Institute of Race Relations in London. Educated at Cambridge University, he holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University. 

MUSIC ON THE SHOW: intro--“WATER NO GET ENEMY” BY FELA KUTI; break--“KURIMA” BY CHIWONISO MARAIRE; sign-off--“ANCESTRAL HOME” BY R. CARLOS NAKAI commemorating Indigenous Peoples Month; closing--“MANY RIVERS TO CROSS” BY JIMMY CLIFF remembering Jimmy Cliff who joined the ancestors on two days ago November 24 (July 30, 1944--November 24, 2025). 

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Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into AfricaNow! live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 2:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

New tracks tagged #UN Climate Change Conference