Youth climate activism in shrinking spaces: how Uganda’s activists navigate red lines

The limited research on youth climate activism in the Global South highlights that repression is a key obstacle for such activism in Southern countries. How young climate activists navigate repression, however, has hardly been studied so far. To help close this gap, we examine Uganda’s vocal youth climate movement, which has arisen despite a restricted political context. Drawing on framing research, we argue that framing strategies can enable activism within shrinking spaces. Our analysis retraces the Ugandan movement’s collective action frames based on social media, showing a divide between moderate groups and a confrontative civil disobedience faction, with the latter being repressed. We find that Uganda’s very visible mainstream youth climate groups have employed three framing strategies to evade repression: aligning their frames with the Ugandan government, maintaining vagueness, and targeting international actors. This framing strategy allows for activism in constrained settings but also has its downsides.