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]

Cécile Ndjebet
President of the African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests
Personal details
Born	Littoral Region (Cameroon)
Alma mater	Wageningen Agricultural University
Occupation	environmental activist
Awards	2022 Wangari Maathai Award

Early life and education

Cécile Ndjebet was born in a rural locality near Edea in the Littoral region of Cameroon, the 9th of 14 children.^[2] Her mother was a farmer, so Ndjebet was brought up with an understanding of forestry and rural life.^[3] 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.^[4]

Career

Cécile Ndjebet started her career in Cameroon as a civil servant. In 2012, she was elected Climate Change Champion of the Central African Commission on Forests.^[5] She is the President of the African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF), an organisation promoting women's participation in natural resources management in Cameroon she founded in 2001.^[5]

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.^[2] Ndjebet was inspired about tree planting after meeting Wangari Maathai in 2009.^[6]

Awards

• 2022 : Wangari Maathai Forest Champions Award^[7]
• 2022 : United Nations Champion of the Earth for Inspiration and Action^[8]
• 2025: Kew International Medal awarded for globally recognised work adding to knowledge and understanding of plants and fungi, for championing women's rights in forest management.^[9][2]