Greta’s Nobel loss to African peacemaker

SHE had been hotly tipped to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her headline-grabbing climate change campaign.

But the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has lost out to Ethiopia’s prime minister, who brought to an end a 20-year war with neighbouring Eritrea.

The schoolgirl was the bookies’ favourite after her ‘school strike for climate’ movement gained global support. She began a lone protest outside Sweden’s parliament last October, saying she would refuse to attend school on Fridays until the government tackled climate change.

After hundreds of thousands of other youngsters joined her movement, the teenager sailed to New York to speak at the UN general assembly about the issue and was criticised by President Donald Trump, a climate change sceptic.

But yesterday it was announced that Abiy Ahmed, pictured, had won the peace prize. Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Institute which awards the prize, said Mr Ahmed, 43, had been recognised for his efforts to achieve peace and international co-operation, and in particular ‘for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict’. She said he has initiated reforms that give many Ethiopians ‘hope for a better life and a brighter future’. Along with ending the decades long war with Eritrea, the former army intelligence officer – who is Africa’s youngest leader – also released political prisoners and journalists, lifted bans on opposition groups and appointed women to his cabinet – all within a year of taking office. Although the Nobel committee never reveals who was on its shortlist, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and activists calling for reform in Hong Kong are also thought to have missed out on this year’s peace prize.