This session examines the patterns of, and evidence for, climatic and environmental change in drylands in both hemispheres of Africa. Understanding these patterns has important implications for human populations of the past, present and future. The aim of the session is to provide a forum for researchers working in African dryland environments to report and discuss new and emerging data from both empirical and modelling studies. Key technical questions that we would like to address include i) deriving robust palaeoenvironmental proxies in dryland environments; ii) relationships between landscape and ecosystem change over time; iii) the sensitivity of responses at multi-millennial and multi-decadal timescales and iv) improving the understanding of the spatial/geographical scale of environmental and climatic change. The session will also consider reconstructions of conditions at key time slices such as the LGM and African Humid Period, and developments in the understanding of inter-hemispheric linkages.