The Re-imagining Reproduction project hosted its fourth conference, Seeds of Change: Planetary Health and Reproduction in Africa, at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on 3-4 June 2025. The conference brought together African scholars to explore how climate change and planetary health are deeply intertwined with reproductive rights, decisions, and justice on the continent.

Over two days, participants examined the effects of environmental degradation, food insecurity, cultural norms, and socio-political instability on reproductive health outcomes across Africa. Keynote addresses by Mr Dunstan Matungwa (National Institute for Medical Research), Dr Rosemarie Mwaipopo (University of Dar es Salaam), Professor Sam Maghimbi (University of Dar es Salaam) and Dr Francis Lyimo (University of Dar es Salaam) underscored the urgent need to contextualize reproductive health and rights within Africa’s ecological and socio-political realities.

Panel discussions on 3 June 2025 focused on the growing impact of climate change on community wellbeing and women’s reproductive choices. Case studies highlighted how resource scarcity, survival pressures, shifting agricultural systems, and increasing health vulnerabilities affect access to care and reproductive autonomy.

On 4 June 2025, the discussion centred on nutrition, gendered bodies, cultural norms and displacement. Presenters shared stories of disrupted care, the resilience of displaced women navigating hostile systems, the politics of male virility, and the implications of poor diets on medical conditions such as endometriosis. Discussions called for a decolonisation of reproductive health discourse and emphasised that environmental harms are also reproductive justice issues.

The conference concluded with a call for more interdisciplinary, locally grounded research to address the complex realities of reproduction in Africa. The connection between reproduction and planetary health is still under-theorised and often reduced to climate change alone. Broader conceptions of planetary health—encompassing systems of extraction, socio-political violence, and cultural narratives—remain under-explored. The conference served as a starting point for future work that centres African perspectives in the global planetary health conversation.