Hilda Flavia Nakabuye has a surprisingly soft voice for a young woman who has dared to demonstrate in Kampala since 2017 and regularly questions the government of her country. We meet the 22-year-old student in a Parisian hotel close to the Quai d'Orsay where she is invited to speak this Thursday for the 5th edition of the Night of Ideas.
Two years ago, this young woman with thin braids did not know anything about global warming. We didn't talk about it either in his family - mother stylist, father in logistics - or in school. In 2017, when she just entered the University of Kampala to study logistics, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye participated in a meeting of Green Campaign Africa, an association of Ugandan students focused on the climate.
We decipher the IPCC reports, the rise in global temperatures, as well as the local pollution of rivers and forests. "It was a click and in a way a relief," she reports. I understood the why of a terrible situation. The collective commitment takes a new turn with the call of Greta Thunberg, in 2018, to the school strike for the climate. In Kampala, Hilda is alone on the first Friday with her little sign. But little by little, she will gather friends. Even his parents participate when they can.
"To demonstrate, you have to negotiate with the police"
However, it is not easy to demonstrate in Uganda in a country where power has been in the hands of an authoritarian regime for more than 30 years: "Authorization must be negotiated with the police," she describes. With us, the law provides that bringing together more than three people on the street can be considered an attack on the government. "
Social networks helping, here in any case the Kampalaise youth connected to a global movement. "Greta", the Swedish activist, is at the center of the discussions. “It's true, our countries are in very different situations. But our fight is the same: we ask our government to declare a climate emergency. "
When she is not in the street with a sign in her hand, Hilda meets other young people or else carries out cleaning operations on the shores of Lake Victoria. It targets students first. "Adults" are often depressing. The member of Parliament, who received them in March 2019 by promising them mountains and wonders, never contacted them again.
As for his teachers, they are frankly hostile to this movement: "After a Friday when I had missed his course, a professor told me that there was nothing to do if God had decided to change the climate" , she reports. Invited at the last COP (world climate conference) in Madrid as well as at the C40 Cities summit in Copenhagen (Denmark) in October, she became a spokesperson for environmental concerns.
The impact of rising temperatures
The young activist bounces back from the story of Vanessa Nakaté, the only black person censored in a group photo of youth climate movements on January 26. "I know Vanessa, it's sad. It is not only it that has been wiped out, but an entire continent. "
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"Abroad, I sometimes start my speeches by saying that I am a living example," she says. It is important that the people of the North hear the voice of the South. The least developed countries are very small emitters. “Uganda for example does not weigh more than 0.00000 something from emissions. These nations suffer the greatest impact, she points out.
His homeland is indeed particularly affected by natural disasters. In June, six people lost their lives - and around fifty disappeared - in a landslide caused by torrential rain at the foot of Mount Elgon, near the Kenyan border. A hundred houses were also taken away and the crops destroyed ... The country is also affected by "the rise in temperatures which is drying up the plantations and the massive deforestation to produce charcoal which is drying up the land", adds Hilda.
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