Cropped out. Fighting back.

Written By Peter Allan

Nakate, 24, founded the Rise Up movement, which aims to raise awareness about climate change in Africa Mustafah Abdulaziz for TIME

By Chris Hatch

Vanessa Nakate may be the world’s most famous African climate activist but if you know her name, it’s probably because of her absence. In 2020, the Associated Press organized a group photo of Nakate and four other young women in Davos, Switzerland. But when the photo was published, there was Greta Thunberg alongside three other white women — Vanessa was nowhere to be seen, she’d been cropped out of the picture.

A tempest on social media forced AP to replace the cropped shot and apologize. That glaring example of erasure is newly resonant as the world’s governments gather for the umpteenth annual UN climate summit this week. Dubbed the “African COP,” the 27th Conference of the Parties is being held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheik on the Sinai Peninsula. Across the narrow straits of the Red Sea, horrendous climate impacts are regularly cropped out of the Western media’s portrayal of the climate crisis.

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