Vanessa Nakate, who is the young climate activist who fights with Greta Thunberg

The first time that all the newspapers in the world talked about her was when, in January 2020, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Associated Press published a photo of the other young activists present, but he had cut her off.

Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan, 24 years old, he commented on Twitter: “You haven’t just deleted a photo. You have wiped out a continent“. The news agency apologized, explaining that the intention was to take a close-up of Greta Thunberg, and not to leave her out of the picture.

But, in the meantime, Vanessa had received solidarity from all over the web and had raised the discussion about excluding the most vulnerable communities from the global climate debate. “While this incident was so painful, it changed history for various activists in the global South, ”Vanessa later acknowledged. “I think what has really helped me to become who I am today is the fact that I have spoken and that people have responded with support.”

In January 2019, just like Greta Thunberg did, Vanessa he had started a lone strike against the lack of commitment to the climate crisis. For several months she demonstrated alone outside the gates of Uganda’s parliament, then other young people began responding to his appeals on social media to draw attention to the plight of the Congolese rainforests. Nakate founded the Youth for Future Africa and movement Rise Up, which is based in Africa.

Today Vanessa, who holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in Marketing at the Makerere University Business School, continues to fight for the environment alongside Greta Thunberg and, together, they talked about the Milan stage at the event Youth4Climate, criticizing leaders around the world for failing to deliver on commitments to tackle climate change and limiting themselves to a “bla bla bla”, while climate change is continuing to cause damage around the world.

During the meeting, he said that, just last week, he saw police take away a body that had been swept away by violent storms in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, while other victims were reported missing. Her mother told her that the man who disappeared in the water had tried to save the goods he was selling. Nakate stressed how climate change is affecting the African continent, “which is paradoxical, given that Africa, after Antarctica, is the lowest emitter of CO2 emissions from all continents “.

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