Africa's environmental history is written in the hearts of its people according to their demographics. Much of the primordial experience is reflected in the peoples' relationship with the earth rather than collecting precious zoological, metallurgical, and anthropological specimens or discovery proclamations. Nevertheless, many people have argued that the adverse effect of governance, economics, and sociology on the continent is causing the environment's quality to deteriorate at a profound pace.

Greener Africa's debut episode explores the process of interaction between native plants, soils, climate, and animals with human action and response over the period pre-1700 to 2000. Environmental history rarely falls neatly into specific dates, nor can a history encompass all of Africa rest on a fixed bookend date. In the late twentieth century, Africa's environment has changed from what Africans and outsiders observed in 1800. There are relatively widespread beliefs that degradation rather than merely change has been a dominant theme: the allegedly destructive processes include deforestation, erosion, loss of soil fertility, increasing drought, and biodiversity loss.

Media imagery and accounts of declining natural resources have dominated public perceptions of Africa. How accurate are these assertions of environmental decline? Who are the victims, and who are the perpetrators? What and where are the casualties? This discussion will encourage a test of those arguments and help illustrate the processes that shaped Africa's environmental history in the last few centuries of the millennium.