Rugby sevens star Kevin Wekesa: ‘I am not blaming Europeans but I must highlight climate injustices’
The Kenyan player has been recognised for his advocacy and grassroots work to tackle sport’s carbon footprint“Most well-known people who talk about climate change are in North America and Europe,” says Kenyan rugby sevens star Kevin Wekesa, “but for us this is a very relevant conversation,It is not only about future tournaments or big international pledges,In Kenya, we see the effects in rising heat, cracked pitches and changing weather in communities where young athletes are growing up,”A year before competing in his first Olympic Games at Paris 2024, Wekesa responded to Kenya’s relegation from the top tier of international sevens by offering free rugby coaching in schools across Kenya,After travelling to a school in Kirinyaga on the slopes of Mount Kenya, a wet and verdant region, Wekesa found an unplayable dry field and was forced to cancel the session.
One of the students told Wekesa that conditions had been similar for two months, while another suggested the unfamiliar weather was because of climate change.“I thought to myself, if it’s already affecting this level of sport, what about at the highest level?” That same year, he founded Play Green, an organisation that connects sport with climate action.Wekesa went on to win a 2025 IOC Climate Action Award, recognised his success with Play Green, including leading the Kenyan men’s and women’s national sevens teams to use reusable water bottles, saving approximately 1,000 plastic bottles every week.Wekesa hopes to extend his influence beyond Kenya’s national setup and make banning single-use plastic a policy in Kenyan rugby clubs and tournaments.“If I can eliminate plastic directly from all the clubs in Kenya, it can eventually grow organically to other sports in the country.
” In April, Wekesa met Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, to discuss reducing single-use plastic at the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in 2027, which Kenya will host alongside Uganda and Tanzania,Play Green also focuses on climate change education in Kenyan schools,“We work with children because they are inheriting the climate crisis, not because they are causing it,” Wekesa says,“Kenyan children have a very small carbon footprint compared to children growing up in high-carbon economies like northern Europe, yet they are often more exposed to the consequences: drought, floods, heat, water shortages, food insecurity, illness and missed school,I am not blaming European children but I must highlight climate injustices.
”Play Green does not only treat children as victims of climate change, but as active participants in protecting their environment.“For me, climate action is practical, visible, and rooted in community, just like rugby.It takes a community to tackle climate action; it is not about pointing fingers.” Wekesa explains that many children in vulnerable communities are aware of climate change, but education empowers them to take small actions that reduce its impacts, such as conserving water.After giving climate change talks and playing rugby with students, Wekesa tasks them with adopting trees planted by Play Green, writing their names on a label along with the year the sapling was planted.
When Wekesa realised that children were sometimes too hungry to play rugby after school, Play Green primarily plants fruit trees — avocado, mango, guava and other indigenous species — to provide nourishment.Wekesa is also piloting a scheme that provides children with wholegrain porridge.The trees planted in each school depend on the climate of each location, which Wekesa learned about after visiting the Kenya Forest Reserve.He acknowledges that there are more effective ways to reduce carbon emissions than planting trees, but in addition to providing nutrition, explains that they give students “a sense of belonging” to their surroundings while providing shade that can be used as outdoor classrooms.“I remember many times doing a literature lesson under a tree when it was too hot to be in a classroom.
”Throughout May, Wekesa is teaching rugby, distributing pre-used rugby balls and planting fruit trees in 10 schools that have expressed interest in joining Play Green.So far, he has held workshops in over 40 Kenyan schools and planted over 6,200 trees.Some students who participated in the first workshops have even introduced Play Green initiatives to new schools while progressing through their education.Wekesa, who is still only 25 and recently finished his mechanical engineering degree, recognises that travelling to play rugby has its own carbon footprint and tries to minimise what he can.But he says that other people’s pledges, such as using sustainable transport to attend sports events, motivate him to do more, because it is evidence that people engage with climate change through sport.
“It creates a wider group of people who are like a Play Green team around the world.”This is an extract from our newsletter, The Hotspot.To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions.
Google announces raft of free upgrades for Android phones
Google has announced a range of features coming to Android phones this year, including a new Gemini Intelligence AI system and a tool to help users avoid distracting apps.Revealed in a livestreamed “Android Show” event, the free upgrades are scheduled to arrive in waves over the next year for high-end new and old phones alike, including Samsung and Pixel devices. Google also revealed that a new lineup of laptops will arrive in the autumn.Gemini Intelligence will combine the company’s top AI tools into one system aimed at being more proactively useful.It will be able to automate tasks by directly interacting with the apps already on a phone
Head of Microsoft’s Israel branch to step down after inquiry into dealings with Israeli military
The head of Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary will step down in the wake of an inquiry that has scrutinised its business dealings with the Israeli military.Microsoft ordered the inquiry last year in response to a Guardian investigation revealing the military had used the company’s technology to operate a powerful surveillance system that collected Palestinian civilian phone calls on a mass scale.The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found the military’s elite spy agency, Unit 8200, had used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store a vast trove of intercepted calls from Gaza and the West Bank.The inquiry commissioned by Microsoft is understood to have recently concluded. Its findings are unclear; however, sources familiar with the situation said they prompted an announcement last week that Microsoft Israel’s general manager, Alon Haimovich, would leave the company
GameStop’s $55.5bn bid for eBay rejected as ‘neither credible nor attractive’
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Trump heads to China to spread the gospel of American tech
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian.Donald Trump is headed to China this week. If his guest list is any clue, he wants to discuss technology with Xi Jinping, though perhaps after the war in Iran.On Monday, news broke that outgoing Apple CEO, Tim Cook, as well as SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, would join Trump
Trump heads to China to spread the gospel of American tech while emulating Xi Jinping on AI
Donald Trump is heading to China this week. If his guest list is any clue, he wants to discuss technology with Xi Jinping, though perhaps after the war in Iran.On Monday, news broke that outgoing Apple CEO, Tim Cook, as well as SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, would join the US president. Other guests from the tech sphere include Meta’s recently appointed president, Dina Powell McCormick; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of computer memory maker Micron; Chuck Robbins, CEO of longtime telecom giant Cisco; and Cristiano Amon, CEO of semiconductor maker Qualcomm, according to a White House official.Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO – who is close to Trump but criticized the US’s limitations on chip sales to China in an April interview, saying that he didn’t want a “loser mentality” to cost the US its edge in AI – will not be joining the president
Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright
Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instruction of a charlatan astrologer called Pseudoramus, insists his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden and elderly wigmaker.While the theme could well have been dreamed up by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and scenery were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat)
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