“Who builds the future, and for whom is it built?”
This is the question we must ask as we look toward climate innovation especially in a world that urgently needs inclusive, context-aware solutions. As the impacts of climate change accelerate, technology is often celebrated as the savior. But if we are not careful, it risks becoming another tool of exclusion, reinforcing old power dynamics under the guise of progress.
The term “decolonizing climate tech” may sound provocative, but it is rooted in a very practical reality: too many technologies meant to serve the Global South are still designed far from it geographically, socially, and ideologically. And too often, the voices of those most affected by climate risks are left out of the design, deployment, and ownership of the technologies that shape their lives.
Climate Tech’s Power Imbalance
Despite growing global attention, climate tech innovation remains highly concentrated in the Global North. Venture capital flows disproportionately into start-ups based in the U.S. and Europe, while African, Asian, and Latin American innovators face underfunding and systemic barriers to scale. Meanwhile, entire communities across the Global South are used as testbeds for technologies that may never truly serve their needs from AI models built on foreign data to climate-smart tools rolled out without local language support or community input. This disconnect creates solutions that are technically impressive but socially irrelevant.
We need to ask hard questions:
- Who gets to define the problems and the “solutions”?
- Who owns the data and who benefits from it?
- What does climate resilience look like in contexts where electricity, internet, and infrastructure are not guaranteed?
These questions point to a larger issue the colonial legacy of extraction, dependency, and invisibility now reappearing in the digital space.
Reframing the Narrative: From Recipients to Architects
The Global South is not short on innovation. Across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, communities are crafting low-tech, locally rooted solutions from decentralized solar energy networks to mobile-based early warning systems and indigenous ecosystem restoration projects. These are climate technologies, even if they don’t fit the dominant “tech” narrative.
But these innovations often remain underfunded, under-recognized, or unscaled, not because they lack value—but because they lack visibility in the global tech ecosystem.
Decolonizing climate tech means reframing the narrative:
- From charity to capacity
- From pilots to platforms
- From dependency to co-creation
It’s about creating space for context-specific knowledge systems, valuing indigenous innovation, and funding South-led solutions at scale.
The Risk of Data Colonialism
A growing concern in the climate tech space is data colonialism the extraction of environmental, social, and geospatial data from the Global South, often without consent, transparency, or benefit-sharing.
Satellite imagery, climate risk models, and population data are increasingly used to build AI models, direct funding flows, and assess risk. But the communities behind this data rarely have access to the tools that are built from it. Worse, they are sometimes excluded from the decisions made using that data reinforcing cycles of external control.
We must shift toward data sovereignty, where communities not only contribute data but own, govern, and benefit from it.
Toward a Just Climate Innovation Ecosystem
Here’s what a decolonized climate tech ecosystem could look like:
- Locally led innovation: Fund and scale start-ups and grassroots orgs led by those closest to the problem.
- Context-first design: Embed local realities into every stage—from problem definition to prototyping to testing.
- Ethical funding: Create funding models that are long-term, equitable, and non-extractive.
- Inclusive platforms: Build global ecosystems where Global South voices are not just featured but drive the conversation.
- Knowledge reciprocity: Ensure that knowledge flows in both directions South to North, and vice versa.
This shift is not just ethical it’s strategic. Without the Global South’s leadership, the global climate agenda will fail. The majority of the world’s young population lives in the South. The fastest growing urban centers are in the South. The most climate-vulnerable and the most adaptive communities are in the South. Their innovation is not optional; it is essential.
A Personal Reflection
As a data and climate professional born in Uganda and working in France, I have seen both sides of the innovation coin. I’ve worked on infrastructure and digital transformation projects in East Africa, and I’ve participated in data-driven climate initiatives in Europe. What’s clear to me is that innovation that ignores context is destined to fail. But innovation that listens, includes, and empowers especially in communities that have long been excluded can change everything. Decolonizing climate tech isn’t just a critique. It’s a call to action to build differently, fund differently, and think differently. It is about designing a climate future where everyone has a seat at the table not just as beneficiaries, but as builders.
Conclusion
As we move forward into an era of accelerating climate challenges, the question is not just “what” technology we build but “with whom, and for whom?” True climate resilience will be driven by those who know their communities best, who live the risks daily, and who are already innovating quietly, creatively, and powerfully. It’s time the world listened and invested.
Let’s move beyond innovation that speaks about the Global South, and toward innovation that speaks from it.
