Vanessa Nakate is a climate activist from Uganda. She was her country's first Fridays for Future activist and is also the founder of the Rise Up Movement. She is the author of the new book"A Bigger Picture: My Fight To Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis" . The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.
In Uganda, where I am from, it used to be that no one ever really talked about climate change. It was taught in school as if it were a far-off threat -- something that our grandchildren might face. But we are facing it now, and our futures are in jeopardy. Vanessa Nakate Uganda is heavily reliant on agriculture for people's livelihoods, and that means that increasing drought, flooding, landslides and even locust swarms, all driven by global warming, have caused countless people to lose their incomes -- and even their lives -- in the last decade. And it's not just Uganda: The entire continent of Africa is often ignored or made an afterthought in global discussions on climate change.
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