Vanessa Nakate (born 15 November 1996) is a Ugandan climate justice activist.
Early life
Nakate grew up in the Ugandan capital, Kampala neighborhood. She grew up in Kampala and became prominent in December 2018 after becoming concerned about the unusually high temperatures in her country. Nakate graduated with a business administration in marketing degree from Makerere University Business School.
Actions for the climate
Inspired by Greta Thunberg to start her own climate movement in Uganda, Nakate began a solitary strike against inaction on the climate crisis in January 2019. For several months she was the lone protester outside of the gates of the Parliament of Uganda. Eventually, other youth began to respond to her calls on social media for others to help draw attention to the plight of the Congolian rainforests. Nakate founded the Youth for Future Africa and the likewise Africa-based Rise Up Movement.
In December 2019, Nakate spoke at the COP25 gathering in Spain, together with the young climate activists Greta Thunberg and Alejandro Martínez.
In early January 2020, she joined around 20 other youth climate activists from around the world to publish a letter to participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, calling on companies, banks and governments to immediately stop subsidizing fossil fuels. She was one of five international delegates invited by Arctic Basecamp to camp with them in Davos during the World Economic Forum; the delegates later joined a climate march on the last day of the Forum.
In October 2020, Nakate gave a speech at the Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture urging world leaders to "wake up" and recognise climate change as a crisis, tying it to poverty, hunger, disease, conflict and violence against women and girls. "Climate change is a nightmare that affects every sector of our lives," she stated. "How can we eradicate poverty without looking at this crisis? How can we achieve zero hunger if climate change is leaving millions of people with nothing to eat? We are going to see disaster after disaster, challenge after challenge, suffering after suffering (...) if nothing is done about this." She also called for leaders to “leave their comfort zones and see the danger we are in and do something about it. This is a matter of life and death.”
Nakate started the Green Schools Project, a renewable energy initiative, which aims to transition schools in Uganda to solar energy and install eco-friendly stoves in these schools. As of now, the project has carried out installations in thirty schools.
On 9 July 2020 Vanessa Nakate was interviewed by Angelina Jolie hosted by Time magazine about the power and importance of African voices in the climate justice movement. In August, Jeune Afrique magazine named her among the top 100 most influential Africans. In August 2020, Vanessa Nakate joined former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the Forum Alpbach to discuss climate activism.
In September, Vanessa spoke on a panel entitled “Sparking an Era of Transformational Climate Leadership” for the World Resources Institute; she talked of her perspective in “Conversations with Climate Changers” for Oxfam. Vanessa Nakate was announced by the United Nations as the SDG 13 young leader in 2020. Nakate was featured among OkayAfrica's 100 Women is an exclusive platform to pay homage to 100 women of excellence among the diaspora during Women's History Month. Nakate was mentioned among the most influential young Africans in 2020 by YouthLead. Nakate was a keynote speaker at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2021 on 16 March 2021 alongside other notable world leaders. Her delivery included criticism of the German Federal Foreign Office as organizers for screening the input from youth climate activists that was not applied to other invited speakers.
Writing in The Guardian in October 2021, Nakate argues that the countries and corporations largely responsible for greenhouse emissions should compensate African countries and communities for the loss and damage arising from climate change that they are now suffering.