Vanessa Nakate is not Greta, but she is on this path. The 24-year-old Ugandan activist arrived in Glasgow — the British city where COP26 takes place — with her agenda controlled by an advisor and with no free spaces.
Less than two years after being cut from a photo in which she appeared in a group with Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Nakate had more exposure at this climate conference than the famous Swedish activist who inspired her in 2018.
The Ugandan woman spoke at the two main marches held in Glasgow last week, while Greta only participated in the first one, on Friday (5), organized by Fridays for Future, a network of young people founded by Sweden.
On Saturday (6), Nakate was applauded by more than 100,000 activists from various groups: unions, political parties, religious movements, human rights defenders, feminists and pro-refugee and anti-racism activists.
Two days later, during COP26, he was the highlight at a meeting with young leaders from around the world, which was also attended by former US president Barack Obama.
If that wasn’t enough, she has just released a book, “A Bigger Picture” (a broader view), praised by Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
It’s an impressive display for a girl who was so shy that she didn’t dare speak in her classroom and trembled at the thought of engaging in political protests — which in her country were brutally repressed when she was a child.
Nakate turns 25 three days after the end of COP26, a difference of seven years from Greta. Maturity can be seen in the articulation of her speeches, which are more elaborate and less aggressive than those of her Swedish colleague. “It’s a powerful global voice,” said American actress and activist Angelina Jolie, who interviewed her for Time magazine.
In public messages, this voice takes on a religious, almost evangelistic tone. “A new world is possible,” the Ugandan activist said on Friday, after describing a utopia in which flooded lands drain and flourish, children study and progress, and everyone is happy and peaceful.
“There is triumph in the city, because the power of the people has finally won. The world is green again. Nature has been restored. The planet and creation are respected,” he preached, in one of the most applauded moments of his speech on Friday.
Nakate is indeed a practicing Christian, to the point of looking up Bible verses on his phone during interviews and quoting them in his arguments.
In his Friday speech, the religious inspiration was clear: “Three things must remain as we continue to mobilize, protest and strike: faith, hope and love. And of the three the main one is love, because if we continue to love people and the planet, that will be our strength.”
Even when he protests, he keeps his voice controlled and his face serious. That’s how she charged the former US president for the failure of Western leaders to fulfill their pledge to allocate $100 billion to finance the climate transition.
In front of a small but full audience of microphones and cameras, she warned: “So I say to the leaders gathered here at COP26: show us the money! And to President Obama: you want to meet the youth here at the COP. waiting for you”.
A few hours later, in a restricted-access plenary, Obama asked young people to remain indignant, but to turn anger into actions and, above all, votes.
The daughter of a Kampala businessman and political leader, Nakate grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in the Ugandan capital. What led her to activism in 2018 were the impact of the climate on the crops that feed the poor in the country and other African nations and the need to protect the Congo forest, which borders her homeland.
With 47 million inhabitants, your country is in the great lakes region of Africa. It is crossed by rivers and covered by savannas and forests where gorillas live. In recent years, however, weather extremes have caused long droughts and devastating storms, followed by floods and landslides.
Nearly three years ago, Nakate and his four brothers took to the streets of the capital, saying “Nature is life” and “When you plant a tree, you plant a forest.” She was so nervous she couldn’t feel her legs, she told the Africa editor of the British newspaper Financial Times, which earlier this month named her a “global online celebrity” in the prestigious “Lunch with the FT” section.
In January 2019, a recent graduate in administration and marketing, Nakate started a solitary protest in front of the Ugandan Parliament and launched an internet call to mobilize for the rainforests.
Her actions have resonated with young people at home and abroad, and growing support has led her to found a youth activism network, Youth for Future Africa, One Million Activist Stories, which documents the experiences of young activists around the world, and Movimento Rise Up (Rise Up), which sponsors solar panels for schools in Uganda’s most disadvantaged regions.
Already that year, she arrived at her first COP, in Madrid, as one of those chosen to speak at the conference. In January of the following year, she went to the WEF (World Economic Forum) in Davos, where a setback definitely projected her onto the international scene.
Nakate was photographed alongside four white activists — Greta, German Luisa Neubauer, Swedish Isabelle Axelsson and Swiss Loukina Tille — after a press conference, but the Associated Press agency cut Nakate from the image when distributing it to its clients.
She protested, and the episode sparked accusations of racism amplified by activists and various non-governmental organizations on social media.
A pressure made the Associated Press distribute the unabridged version of the image, and the backlash turned Nakate into a new green youth star. A year later, she was already named one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the Year, one of the 100 most influential African girls and one of the UN’s Young Leaders for Sustainable Development Goals.
She started to be invited to lectures by large pension funds, such as Norfund, from the government of Norway, a country that is one of the world’s largest oil producers — in turn, a constant target of the activist.
“We can’t eat coal. We can’t drink oil. And we can’t breathe the so-called natural gas. The climate crisis is not about statistics, it’s about real people like you and me. And it’s happening right now,” she said in Saturday speech.
Since becoming an activist, Nakate has also stopped eating meat and drinking milk. She became a vegetarian to reduce the negative impact that livestock has on the climate, according to environmental activists, especially those linked to animal welfare.
Reporter Jessica Maes traveled to Glasgow as part of the 2021 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
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