By Staff Writer
In September 2019, a 16 year old Swedish Climate activist, Greta Thunberg gave an impassioned speech at the U.N Climate Action Summit. It’s a speech that many saw as a condemnation against the world leaders for not doing anything about saving this planet. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood. Change is coming whether you like it or not,” Greta assured the world leaders.
Back home, more than 10,000 kilometres away from NewYork, the campaign of a Ugandan climate activist was picking storm. By then, she’d featured in an evening news bulletin for her hunger fast against climate change. The Ugandan Climate activist was none other than 23 year old Vanessa Nakate, a University student at Makerere University Business School.
In 2020, fate would bring Greta Thunberg and her mentee, Vanessa Nakate in one place at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland. It’s the aftermath of the event that brought the rest of the world to knowing Nakate. In a photo used by the Associated Press, Nakate, the only person of color in the photo had been cropped out. Nakate ran to twitter to air out her concerns, an attempt by AP to erase black climate activists and their efforts.
But who is Nakate?
Nakate was born on 15th November 1996 in Kampala, Uganda. She’s one of the Museveni children aka, the children that were born, raised, and aged in the regime of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
In January 2019, she spent months as a lone protester at the Ugandan Parliament. She would wake up every morning, leave her campus hostel and walk all the way to Parliament, a distance of more than 5 kilometres. With her, were banners protesting against human inaction concerning climate change. Her main concern has been about plastic pollution.
Nakate is now a degree holder with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing. But she’s chosen to put all this on hold as she urgently addresses the needs of the globe. She’s now a founder of two organisations; “Youth for Future Africa” and “Rise-Up Movement.” It’s only after she was cropped out of the photo that Twitter got to verifying her after endless attempts at the same. It seems after climate change, Nakate will have to deal more with the systemic racism.
For her secondary school education, Nakate went through two mighty girls’ only schools; “Our Lady of Good Counsel-Gayaza” and “Trinity College-Nabbingo.” Many of her former schoolmates described her as a very peaceful introvert. “She just seems to hatch up all her ideas in silence. She will take action as a loner.”
Nakate is also a big fan of Phaneroo Fellowship and is known not to miss a single Thursday fellowship. If there’s anything apart from saving the world, it’s her passion for her God. According to friends, she’s still single and most probably not searching.
From the world, after the cropping out incident, Nakate has received love after love after love. One of the messages to her reads; “You just had your firsthand experience of the war against the Black man. They have always tried to erase us from history and now they want to crop you out of the future but as despicable and hurting as it is, you came out the strongest. This incident has had the effect of making you more popular, raising awareness of your name and your noble cause to the world and now you have thousands of new followers. We see you, we value you, we love you!!!”
