African eco-documentary films have become key sites where environmental crisis and cultural identity are negotiated together rather than separately. This article argues that such films are not merely descriptive records of ecological fragility but decolonial interventions that challenge Western environmental determinism, foreground justice, and affirm indigenous cosmologies. Drawing on postcolonial ecocriticism, African ecomedia studies, and environmental justice theory, the article examines how African eco-documentaries decentre the Western gaze, expose colonial and neo-colonial ecologies of extraction, and reposition African communities as agents of resilience and advocacy rather than passive victims. Recent scholarship and selected films – such as Thank You for the Rain (2017), The Shore Break (2014), and short documentaries on sacred forests and traditional conservation – the analysis highlights three interlinked dynamics: (1) reframing ‘nature’ through African historical and cultural lenses; (2) articulating environmental justice as inseparable from gender, class, and political sovereignty; and (3) embedding indigenous knowledge and spiritual ecologies as vital epistemologies for sustainable futures. Situating eco-documentary within African cultural production, the article shows how eco-cinema reconfigures Africanness as ecological, resistant, and globally significant, thereby advancing both environmental humanities and African identity studies in the spirit of African Identities’ commitment to decentring dominant paradigms and theorising syncretic, contested terrains of belonging.