Nnimmo Bassey

Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria; Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF)

Nnimmo Bassey, director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, is a prominent environmental activist and author. He has served on leadership committees for Oilwatch International and the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature, among others. Bassey has received numerous awards, including Time magazine's Hero of the Environment in 2009, the Rafto Human Rights Award, and Nigeria's national honour as Member of the Federal Republic in 2014. He has also received honorary doctorates (University of York, 2019, and York University, 2023) as well the Wallenberg Medal Award from the University of Michigan. Bassey is an architect, writer and poet.

His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It was Blood –Poetry (Kraft Books, 2002), I will Not Dance to Your Beat – Poetry (Kraft Books, 2011), To Cook a Continent –Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012), Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (Daraja Press, 2016) and I See the Invisible — Poetry (DarajaPress, 2023; Kraft Books, 2024).