Ayakha Melithafa

Ayakha Melithafa (she/her), founder of the Ayakha Melithafa Foundation. Youngest commissioner on the Presidential Climate Commission in South Africa and Public representative of the African Climate Alliance, a youth-led climate advocacy group that organised the #climatestrike protests in Cape Town in collaboration with more than a million youths around the world. She is also a graduate of Project 90 by 2030’s YouLead Initiative.

Ayakha, a recipient of the Charlotte Mannya Maxeke Institute’s Women of Firsts Award, was also nominated as one of South Africa’s Most Powerful Women by the Mail and Guardian in 2020 and one of 5 winners of the Matrics In Antarctica programme.

Her activism has seen her represent youth voices from the global south on various national and international platforms including the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and COP26 in Scotland as part of the South African delegation representing South African youth.

Her mission is to help address the greatest ecological crisis of our time and enable leaders to deepen their understanding of complex issues, shape new models and standards and drive scalable, collaborative action for systemic change.

This fierce young woman has called for an immediate moratorium on the extraction of coal, oil and gas in South Africa and she recently made headlines when she joined Greta Thunberg and other teens from across the world in petitioning the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child to hold five of the world’s leading economic powers accountable for inaction on the climate crisis.

Ayakha also hopes to inspire more South African youth voices towards addressing key issues on creating a sustainable, low carbon future and to put pressure on big emitters to stop blocking global climate action; exert pressure on South Africa to reduce its own emissions and plan a just transition; and encourage South African leaders and policymakers to lead Africa in pushing the world towards ambitious climate action.