This ecofeminist inspires young people to take action 

As natural disasters increase in Rwanda and elsewhere, Ineza Umuhoza Grace empowers activism on climate change.

Picture of young woman with blue-yellow-green long scarf flying behind her on the background of lit horizon.
Based in Rwanda, National Geographic Explorer Ineza Umuhoza Grace leads two climate change education and advocacy groups​.
Photograph by Mark Thiessen
ByNina Strochlic
March 8, 2023
3 min read

A few years ago as Ineza Umuhoza Grace watched news footage of families in Rwanda evacuating their flooded homes, a memory surfaced: her mother waking her up at night and dragging her out of the house as torrential rains crashed through the ceiling and water rose from the floor. “I remembered the sense of being powerless,” she says. “And I could not believe that other children could be living that same fear.” (Rwanda is referred to as the “land of a thousand hills.”)

Picture of school kind posing before school entrence.
Combine Earth Day with April Fools’ Day and you get April Cool Day, as celebrated by the Green Protector in schools across Rwanda. To mark the occasion and help cool the planet, members of the environmental club at Kigali’s St. Paul International School plant trees in 2021.
Photograph by Ahimana Thierry
Picture of group of young people putting the tree sapling into the hole in the ground.
Students at the Cyahafi School in Kigali, Rwanda, plant trees on June 17, 2021, the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. The planting project was conceived by one of Umuhoza’s advocacy organizations, the Green Protector.
Photograph by Ahimana Thierry

What Umuhoza had experienced as a child is the type of natural disaster that’s getting more frequent and severe in Rwanda. So she shelved her dream of becoming a pilot, and today the 27-year-old National Geographic Explorer leads two climate change education and advocacy organizations, working within Rwanda and internationally. In 2022 Umuhoza helped present a demand from dozens of youth activists to COP27, the United Nations global summit on climate change, for a fund to cover loss and damages. The effort paid off. World leaders agreed to make contributions to begin offsetting the effects on the most vulnerable nations. (As climate disasters grow more costly, who should pay the bill?)

“We’re all in one boat,” she says. “COVID-19 made it clear that whatever is going to happen in Belgium is going to happen in Rwanda. Just as COVID knew no boundaries, neither does climate change impact.”

The National Geographic Society has funded Ineza Umuhoza Grace’s work since 2020. Learn more about its support of Explorers at natgeo.com/impact.

This story appears in the April 2023 issue of National Geographic magazine.