Cécile Ndjebet

Cécile Bibiane Ndjebet is a Cameroonian environmental activist and social forester. She is known for her work in promoting women's rights to land and forests. She is the winner of the 2022 Wangari Maathai Award and 2025 Kew International Medal.^[1]

From a young age, Ndjebet developed a strong connection to the wildlife around her. Ndjebet learned at the age of four how to farm and gather wild products such as, mushrooms, firewood, and medicinal plants from the forest.^[2] Her early experiences weren't just about gathering plants but rather about responsibility, resourcefulness, and a profound love for the ecological presence in her life.

Ndjebet was born in a rural locality near Edea in the Littoral region of Cameroon, the 9th of 14 children.^[3] Her mother was a farmer, so Ndjebet was brought up with an understanding of forestry and rural life.^[4] She holds degree in agronomy from a university in Cameroon, studied at University of Wolverhampton in the UK and also has a Master of Sciences degree in Social forestry from Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands.^[5] Growing up in a remote part of Cameroon, Ndjebet was acutely aware of the hardships endured by rural women. She saw her mother and others labouring from dawn to dusk, growing crops, tending to animals and raising children. Many of the women did hard labor and back-breaking work on land that they couldn't even own because they were women.

Ndjebet's formal education pushed her to pursue her passion in agronomy studies hence why she got her degree. She also strived for her degree was because she realized that women struggled a lot and so she wanted to protect and advocate for women so she can improve their lives.^[6] Her academic background combines ecological science, gender studies, and rural development, allowing her to break the gap between environmental policy and women empowerment.^[7] Today, she is also known as a gender specialist. She is a PhD Doctorate at the Central Africa Catholic University working on “Gender relations, access to land and socio-economic situation of women in the Cameroon rural coast”.^[8]

Ndjebet started her career in Cameroon as a civil servant 1986.^[9] In 1997, she joined the civil society Organizations. She has been devoted to women's rights issues and is being involved in the national, regional and international forestry, REDD+ and climate change processes for the past 15 years.^[10] In 2009, to promote women’s direct and effective participation in natural resources management in Africa, Ndjebet, together with a group of African Women Rights advocates.^[11] In 2012, she was elected Climate Change Champion of the Central African Commission on Forests.^[12] She is the President of the African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF), an organization promoting women's participation in natural resources management in. Over 600 hectares of degraded land and mangrove forests which have been restored under her stewardship of Cameroon Ecology, an organization she founded in 2001.^[13] Ndjebet is a member of a good number of networks and professional societies at national, regional and global levels. She is the national coordinator of the CSO Platform for REDD+ & CC and regional coordinator of the Central Africa CSO Platform for REDD + & CC.^[14] In May 2021, she was selected as Advisory Board member of the UN Decade on Ecosystems restoration, 2020-2030.^[15] Ndjebet is an Agronomist and Social Forester by profession. Gender specialist and Women Leadership trainer and adviser.^[16]

Her role as a social forester is to link interaction of people and forests in a positive way. Women work the land for food crops but do not own it. However, planting trees provides ownership, so she worked to convince men to allow women to plant trees, and this take ownership of, for example,non-productive, degraded land.^[3] Ndjebet was inspired about tree planting after meeting Wangari Maathai in 2009.^[17] Those early experiences would shape Ndjebet's life. She would go on to become a leading voice for women’s land rights in Africa, spending three decades advocating for gender equality while also repairing hundreds of hectares of nature marred by development the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has named Ndjebet a Champion of the Earth for Inspiration and Action, one of the United Nations’ highest environmental honours.^[18] Humanity has significantly altered three-quarters of Earth’s dry land, chopping down forests, draining wetlands, and polluting rivers at rates experts warn is unsustainable. Ndjebet is among the leaders of the movement to repair that damage. Her vision has resulted in a project by Cameroon Ecology to train women to revive more than 1,000 hectares of forest by 2030.^[19] In 2012, she was elected Climate Change Champion of the Central African Commission on Forests for her leading role in mobilizing civil society organizations to sustainably manage forests. Ndjebet is also a member of the advisory board of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global push to revive degraded landscapes.^[20] Cécile selected for her work campaigning to preserve forests and improve the lives of people that depend on them in Cameroon and wider African region.^[21] Ndjebet was presented with the Kew Medal at the Royal Society, saying: "My vision is a world where we are successful at halting temperature increase and living in harmony with nature. Here, women and Indigenous Peoples take their rightful seat at the table to take action, and youth are taken seriously."^[22]

• 2022 : Wangari Maathai Forest Champions Award^[23]
• 2022 : United Nations Champion of the Earth for Inspiration and Action^[24]
• 2023: Gulbenkian Prize ^[25]
• 2025: Kew International Medal awarded for globally recognized work adding to knowledge and understanding of plants and fungi, for championing women's rights in forest management.^[26][3]