Actor and humanitarian Idris Elba and his wife Sabrina Elba will accompany Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan on Saturday to sub-Saharan Africa, theGrio exclusively reports.
The NAACP and Golden Globe award-winning star, Mrs. Elba and Regan will travel to Ghana and Sierra Leone to focus on the issue of climate change and ways to combat its devastating ripple effects around the globe.
The EPA trip comes weeks before Vice President Kamala Harris’s anticipated Africa trip in late March. Several stops are expected; however, no specific destinations on the continent for the vice president have been confirmed as of yet.
Idris Elba applauds Harris’s upcoming trip to Africa, telling theGrio, “She’s a very powerful woman [and] respected across the continent by other very powerful women on the continent. So I think it will be a great trip for her.”
Elba himself has close ties to the African continent; his mother is from Ghana, and his father is from Sierra Leone. Sabrina Elba’s mother is from Somalia.
Sierra Leone is newly added to the roster of African countries actively engaged by the EPA on climate due to Elba’s advocacy. The Hollywood star approached Administrator Regan in December during President Joe Biden’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, where the Biden-Harris administration announced several upcoming trips by senior officials in 2023.
Regan said Elba challenged his department to be more inclusive of African nations that are less visited traditionally by the U.S. government.
Acknowledging Regan’s role as the first African-American man to head the EPA, Sabrina Elba said she and her husband “connected with his ethos” about climate and Africa and “the good work that he’s doing and the plan he’s developed.
She added: “If we felt this was going to be just a photo op or just a trip for the press … we wouldn’t…
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