Yola Mgogwana educates youth, leads climate marches, and fights for justice through activism, community projects, and advocacy.
In 2019, an eleven-year-old girl from Khayelitsha, one of Cape Town’s largest townships, stood before thousands of young people outside South Africa’s Parliament and demanded climate justice. Her name was Yola Mgogwana, and that moment marked her emergence as one of Africa’s most prominent young climate activists.
She was motivated by the environmental challenges she had witnessed in her community—pollution, unusual weather patterns, and the looming water crisis that threatened Cape Town—based on a single lesson in the Earthchild Project’s Eco-Warriors programme, where she learned for the first time that these problems were directly linked to climate change. Realising the hardships her family and neighbours endured were part of a global crisis, she resolved not to remain silent.
Her activism journey
Mgogwana’s activism began with the Earthchild Project, an after-school initiative combining environmental education, leadership, and life skills for children in communities with limited access to such resources. She quickly stood out for her commitment, joining climate marches and taking the bold step of self-nominating as a spokesperson for young black voices from impoverished areas.
In March 2019, she addressed about 2,000 learners in Cape Town, demanding urgent government action on climate change. She has since been compared to Greta Thunberg—not for imitation but for her courage to speak truth to power at such a young age. Her guiding philosophy is Ubuntu (“I am because you are”), which she interprets as a call for collective responsibility in protecting the environment.
Her work extends beyond protest into grassroots education. In 2019, she founded the Green Environment project for children aged six to nine in Khayelitsha. Meeting twice a week, the group introduces young children to the basics of growing food, caring for nature, and learning about nutrition, addressing not only environmental awareness but also health issues like obesity and malnutrition that affect many South Africans.
Mgogwana’s voice has carried far beyond her neighbourhood. In August 2019, she was a keynote speaker at the UNFPA symposium on Sexual and Reproductive Health, Gender, and Climate Change Resilience in Johannesburg, where she highlighted the intersection of climate change and social justice.
She also became an active member of the African Climate Alliance and Fridays for Future, collaborating with other young activists across the continent. More recently, she participated in the youth-led #CancelCoal court case, which challenges the South African government’s plans to expand its coal fleet in Mpumalanga, one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Since her first march in 2019, Mgogwana has spoken at national and international events, delivered powerful speeches to thousands, and mobilised young people in Khayelitsha and beyond to take climate change seriously. While measurable policy shifts cannot be credited to her alone, her impact is visible in the growing number of learners and children she has engaged through talks, workshops, and grassroots projects.
At just sixteen, Yola Mgogwana continues to demand systemic change from governments while planting seeds of awareness and resilience in her community.
