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When Desmond Alugnoa and Jacob Attakpah stepped onto a celebrity-studded green carpet at the Earthshot Prize awards in Cape Town last week, they had a good feeling. “Not if we win,” said Attakpah, a project manager for the Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO), which is working to change waste management practices in Ghana, “when we win.” Soon after, he and GAYO co-founder Alugnoa walked onto the stage as one of five winners to receive 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) to accelerate and scale up the impact of their work.
The Earthshot Prize supports selected people and organisations that work to improve environmental problems. From thousands of nominated applicants, 1 million- pound prizes are awarded to five winners in five categories: protecting and restoring nature, cleaning air, reviving oceans, reducing waste, fixing the climate. Fifty winners will be awarded over 10 years. Over and above the prize money, an additional $90 million to protect African landscapes was also announced.
This year, 15 finalists — from Kazakhstan, Cost Rica, Ecuador, Nepal, Australia, France, Kenya, the U.K., Indonesia, Uganda and the United States — traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for the award ceremony Nov. 7. It was the culmination of a week of events that saw Table Mountain lit up in green and the city’s mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, symbolically reintroducing the locally extinct Cape water lily (Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea) to the False Bay Nature Reserve, a Ramsar site and wetland of international importance that is threatened by contamination from the city’s sewage and the invasive water hyacinth.
Making use of the limelight
The prize ceremony saw an unusual mix of “celebrities” in attendance. Nominees, put forward for their work in waste management (GAYO), growing algae to feed farmed fish instead of using commonly used wild-caught fish (MiAlgae), the fermentation of wasted food (Ferment’Up), and sustainable brick production (Build up Nepal), mingled with Earthshot prize founder Prince William, South African television presenter Bonang Matheba, model Heidi Klum, actor Billy Porter and actor and activist Nomzamo Mbatha.
The glamor allows people working on environmental solutions attention they don’t otherwise have access to, said Nicholas Hill, co-founder and CEO of prize nominee Coast 4C (which focuses on regenerative seaweed farming), as he stopped for questions on the green carpet.
Ronald Pfende, chief financial officer for Kenya-based nominee d.light, agreed. “Our mission,” he said, is to give access to clean energy to a billion people by 2030, moving them from using kerosene as a light source to renewable solar energy instead.” Though they did not win, Pfende said the connections they made during the week would have taken years otherwise.
Choosing the winners from among the 15 exceptional nominees was difficult, said Hindou Ibrahim, Earthshot Prize council member. But they stood out for their combination of scientific innovation and traditional ecological knowledge while emphasizing long-term environmental protection. And among them this year were two nominees from Africa.
Two African winners
Kenya-based Keep IT Cool (KIC) won in the category to build a waste-free world. They offer affordable, refrigerated cooling boxes and transport solutions to smallholder fishers, fish farmers and poultry farmers across East Africa. In this way, they contribute to reducing food loss before it reaches the consumer.
GAYO won the category of cleaning our air. From small beginnings in 2014, when Alugnoa was an environmental science student at the University of Cape Coast and organized beach cleanups, GAYO is now a recognized waste management organization that advocates a zero-waste strategy and for fair employment of waste pickers. Their work reduces open- air burning and waste incineration of waste.
While funding has been an obstacle, Alugnoa, said their main challenge in every new city they have expanded to is changing the culture of how people see and handle waste. However, Alugnoa said that once people understand the impact of pollution on their health and their lives and that there are solutions, they are willing to change and help. With the exposure and funding from Earthshot, they want further to expand their work beyond the borders of Ghana.
For Alugnoa, winning the Earthshot Prize is a message to youth everywhere. “If our solutions can go this far, then anybody’s innovation also has the potential,” he said, adding that he hopes the event will help to highlight homegrown solutions in Africa to the continent’s problems.
Banner image: Green Africa Youth Organization co-founder Desmond Alugnoa and project manager Jakob Attakpah at the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Cape Town on Nov. 7. Image courtesy of Earthshot Prize.
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