Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist, author and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador whose work connects environmental change with food, education and everyday livelihoods. She began organising climate strikes in Kampala in January 2019 and founded the Rise Up Movement to help African activists reach wider audiences. UNICEF appointed her a goodwill ambassador on 15 September 2022.
Her career has developed across street protests, international conferences, practical school projects and public policy studies. Through these different settings, she has returned to the same question: how can people already experiencing climate damage have a stronger say in decisions about their future?
Who is Vanessa Nakate?
Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist, author and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Known for founding the Rise Up Movement, she campaigns for African communities to be heard in climate decisions. Her work also includes solar energy and cleaner cooking projects in schools, alongside public policy studies at Oxford.
Kampala roots and the questions that led to activism
Nakate was born on 15 November 1996 in Kampala, according to her MN2S speaker biography. She is 29 years old as of 19 October 2026 and turns 30 in November.
Her path into climate work began with an effort to understand problems affecting people in Uganda. Research she undertook in 2018 brought her attention to drought, flooding, landslides and the consequences of unpredictable weather for farming households.
In a 2020 interview with Angelina Jolie for TIME, Nakate described discovering how different parts of Uganda faced different forms of environmental disruption. The subject became a way of understanding threats to people’s homes, incomes and access to essential services.
That connection between environmental conditions and daily survival became central to her public work. A damaged harvest could affect food supplies and a family’s ability to meet other needs. Climate advocacy, in her account, therefore extended into questions that reached far beyond temperature figures.
From a business degree to weekly climate strikes
BIOGRAPHY
Vanessa Nakate Biography: Age, Education and Climate Work
Oct 19, 2026
Oct 19, 2026
10 min read
Published
Updated:
Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist, author and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador whose work connects environmental change with food, education and everyday livelihoods. She began organising climate strikes in Kampala in January 2019 and founded the Rise Up Movement to help African activists reach wider audiences. UNICEF appointed her a goodwill ambassador on 15 September 2022.
Her career has developed across street protests, international conferences, practical school projects and public policy studies. Through these different settings, she has returned to the same question: how can people already experiencing climate damage have a stronger say in decisions about their future?
Who is Vanessa Nakate?
Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan climate justice activist, author and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Known for founding the Rise Up Movement, she campaigns for African communities to be heard in climate decisions. Her work also includes solar energy and cleaner cooking projects in schools, alongside public policy studies at Oxford.
Kampala roots and the questions that led to activism
Nakate was born on 15 November 1996 in Kampala, according to her MN2S speaker biography. She is 29 years old as of 19 October 2026 and turns 30 in November.
Her path into climate work began with an effort to understand problems affecting people in Uganda. Research she undertook in 2018 brought her attention to drought, flooding, landslides and the consequences of unpredictable weather for farming households.
In a 2020 interview with Angelina Jolie for TIME, Nakate described discovering how different parts of Uganda faced different forms of environmental disruption. The subject became a way of understanding threats to people’s homes, incomes and access to essential services.
That connection between environmental conditions and daily survival became central to her public work. A damaged harvest could affect food supplies and a family’s ability to meet other needs. Climate advocacy, in her account, therefore extended into questions that reached far beyond temperature figures.
From a business degree to weekly climate strikes
Nakate holds a Business Administration degree from Makerere University Business School. Her University of Oxford biography confirms that academic background and identifies her as Uganda’s first Fridays for Future striker.
Inspired by Greta Thunberg’s school-strike movement, she began protesting in Kampala in January 2019. Her siblings and cousins joined her early demonstrations. She continued returning with placards, building experience through repeated public action rather than starting with a large organisation or established platform.
The early work also required her to overcome shyness. Speaking in public was a skill she developed through practice, as she explained in later interviews. Standing on a street with a sign was a manageable beginning; larger audiences and international invitations followed.
Her experience shows how a campaign can begin with a specific local concern and gradually connect with a wider movement. Uganda remained the starting point for her arguments, even as her work reached audiences elsewhere.
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Rise Up and the Congo rainforest campaign
Nakate founded the Rise Up Movement to amplify African climate activists. Its purpose reflects a recurring concern in her work: people living with serious climate impacts often have limited access to the platforms where those impacts are discussed.
The United Nations System Staff College’s profile also records her campaign to raise awareness about the Congo rainforest and the threat of deforestation. That work widened her advocacy beyond Uganda while keeping African ecosystems and communities at its centre.
She has resisted being treated as a substitute for the many other activists working across the continent. In a Global Citizen interview, she explained why repeatedly inviting one familiar African speaker can leave other experiences unheard.
“I am from Uganda, and the climate movement is more than one face,” she said.
The distinction is important to her approach. An activist in Uganda may bring different knowledge from someone working in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa. Sharing a platform means making room for those differences and the solutions that emerge from them.
The Davos photograph and the debate over representation
A major turning point came in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Nakate appeared in a photograph with other young climate activists, but a published crop removed her from the image.
The Associated Press issued a statement on 24 January 2020 acknowledging that it had cropped out Nakate, the only person of colour in the photograph. The agency expressed regret and said it would learn from the error.
The incident brought international attention to Nakate and to the representation of African campaigners. For her, visibility was connected to a larger question: whose experiences shape the public understanding of the climate crisis?
Her response became part of a continuing argument for more inclusive journalism and decision-making. The episode is a significant moment in her biography, but her organising, school projects and writing developed into a much broader body of work.
Solar panels and cleaner cooking in Ugandan schools
Nakate’s Vash Green Schools Project brings her advocacy into school facilities. It involves installing solar panels and cleaner cooking stoves in Uganda, linking environmental goals with the practical conditions in which children learn.
In a July 2023 interview with IUCN, she said she had started the project in 2019. She reported 39 installations benefiting about 13,000 children at that point. Those figures describe the project as she reported it in 2023, rather than a current total.
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The project also provides a concrete example of the changes she promotes. School energy use and cooking arrangements create opportunities for improvements that can be explained to pupils, teachers and surrounding communities.
Her account of building confidence carries the same emphasis on practical beginnings. A person does not need an international audience before taking a useful first step. The schools work gives that idea a visible application alongside her speeches and campaigns.
A Bigger Picture and her argument for climate justice
Nakate’s book, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis, was published in 2021. Pan Macmillan’s edition combines her personal journey with an argument for a more inclusive climate movement.
The book brings together experiences that also appear in her public advocacy: growing up in Kampala, finding the courage to protest, facing exclusion and insisting that affected communities should help shape the response.
It extends her work into a form readers can engage with beyond a speech or news interview. Personal experience provides an entry into questions about power, responsibility and the unequal consequences of environmental damage.
Its title captures the breadth of her approach. Understanding climate change requires attention to the people facing its effects, the stories that receive coverage and the voices that are missing from influential discussions.
UNICEF, children’s rights and girls’ education
UNICEF’s appointment announcement establishes the date of Nakate’s goodwill ambassador role as 15 September 2022. Before the announcement, she travelled with the organisation to Turkana in north-western Kenya, meeting families affected by drought and food insecurity.
The visit brought children’s health, nutrition and access to water into her advocacy in a direct way. She saw assistance programmes as well as the hardships families were facing.
In her appointment remarks, she connected the role to opportunities to meet affected children and bring their experiences to wider audiences.
Nakate also serves on the Malala Fund’s U.S. board, as listed by the organisation in October 2026. The fund works for girls’ access to education. That responsibility sits alongside her long-standing interest in how environmental pressures affect children’s ability to remain in school.
Oxford and the move into public policy
Nakate later pursued the Master of Public Policy programme at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government as a Weidenfeld-Hoffmann scholar. In the school’s interview about her studies, she described wanting the knowledge and skills to participate effectively in policy discussions.
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“I saw a problem and I wanted to do something about it,” she explained.
She spoke about learning to articulate issues she had encountered through activism, including through the study of international law. She also described the difficulty of balancing academic work with continuing invitations to speak.
The decision added another dimension to her career: learning how decisions are made and implemented, alongside campaigning for change. Her account also acknowledged the value of stepping back from constant public demands to concentrate on education.
Personal relationships and family status
Nakate’s public work has received far more sustained attention than her private life. New Vision reported a family introduction ceremony with fiancé Davis Reuben on 14 January 2024
Vanessa Nakate’s career timeline
Year | Event | Significance |
2019 | Begins climate strikes in Kampala | Establishes her public campaigning work |
2019 | Starts Vash Green Schools Project | Adds practical school energy initiatives |
2020 | Cropped out of a Davos photograph | Prompts international debate over representation |
2021 | Publishes A Bigger Picture | Develops her arguments through a book |
2022 | Appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador | Expands her work around children’s rights |
2024 | Participates in Oxford’s MPP community | Develops her public policy education |
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Vanessa Nakate?
She is 29 years old as of 19 October 2026, having been born on 15 November 1996.
Where is Vanessa Nakate from?
She is Ugandan and grew up in Kampala, where she began her climate protests.
What did Vanessa Nakate study?
She holds a Business Administration degree from Makerere University Business School and later pursued public policy studies at Oxford.
What is the Rise Up Movement?
It is the movement Nakate founded to amplify African climate activists and their experiences.
When did UNICEF appoint Vanessa Nakate?
UNICEF appointed her a goodwill ambassador on 15 September 2022.
What is Vanessa Nakate’s book called?
Her 2021 book is A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis.
What does the Vash Green Schools Project do?
It supports solar panel and cleaner cooking stove installations in Ugandan schools.
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