By Aliu Akoshile
Two African environmental innovators are among the five winners of the world’s biggest environmental prize, the £5 million Earthshot awards for 2024.
The African heroes are Desmond Alugnoa, Ghanaian co-founder and manager of Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO), and Francis Nderitu, Kenyan founder and managing director of Keep IT Cool, who received £1 million each in support of their creative environmental actions.
The Earthshot Award was instituted by Prince William in 2020, with a prize budget of £50 million to be disbursed at £5 annually for ten years.
The prize is awarded annually to five individuals or organizations who create impactful and sustainable solutions addressing the planet’s environmental challenges.
Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon within a decade, The Earthshot Prize, was launched by Prince William to search for and scale the most innovative solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges.
The three other co-winners of the £5 million Earthshot prize for 2024 are Vera Voronova, Executive Director, Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative; Rita El Zaghloul, Director, High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People; and Kelly Adams, CEO, Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems.
The awards were presented at a colourful dinner on Wednesday in Cape Town, South Africa, headlined by Prince William, founder of The Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales, promoters of the prize.
The winners of the 2024 awards were selected based on rigorous screening from a pool of over 2,400 entries received from 140 countries.
Desmod Alugnoa, who holds degrees in Environmental Science and Climate Governance, works with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).
Since 2019, they have created 70 green jobs for young people, widows, single mothers, and people with disabilities, which has benefited more than 5,000 people.
In 2023, GAYO kept 170 tonnes of waste (104 tonnes of organic and 66 tonnes of plastic) out of landfills. This effort was believed to have saved the equivalent of 3.6 tonnes of CO2 — about the same as the emissions from a round-trip flight between London and Accra.
Alugnoa plans to build a movement across Africa to drive behavioural change in waste management. They aim to grow from 150 to 500 employees across half of Africanj cities by 2030, extending their reach from Ghana into Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Morocco, Madagascar, Niger, and Nigeria.
As part of this, their goal is tou reduce GHG emissions and particle pollution in Ghana by up to 70% compared to open burning, and to divert 50 tonnes/month (600/year) of waste, diverting a total 4,000 tonnes of waste by 2030.
Francis Nderitu’s Keep IT Cool (KIC) won the prize for their creative solutions to the challenge of food spoilage by providing sustainable, localized refrigeration systems that help small farmers and fishers preserve their produce, as well as connect directly to retail markets.
By brokering agreements with 1,600 retailers and eight fisherfolk cooperatives representing 4,500 members, they have saved 25% of the catch that would have been wasted, and 3,600 fisherfolk have seen their incomes increase by more than 15%.
Currently managing 250,000 kg of produce per week, KIC has achieved a 98% reduction in Post Harvest Losses for 1.5 million kg of food since 2022 and planning to launch Kenya’s largest solar-powered cold chain distribution facility, a 70-tonne capacity, which is seven times their current capacity.
With plans to grow into East Africa and beyond, KIC is now working to expand their activities in poultry, fruit, and vegetables, with plans to expand its service to more communities and improving the livelihoods of up to 1.6 million people by 2030.
Propelled by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the Earthshot award is based on five thematic issues, namely, to Protect and Restore Nature – for initiatives that protect and restore natural ecosystems; Clean Our Air – for solutions that reduce air pollution; and Revive Our Oceans – for initiatives that restore and preserve ocean health.
Others are to build a Waste-Free World – for solutions that reduce waste and promote sustainable consumption; and to Fix Our Climate – for initiatives that address climate change.
Justifying the huge prize attached to the awards, The Royal Foundation says that “change was not yet happening fast enough or at the scale we need.
“Levels of climate anxiety and despondency are high, and political interventions are happening too slowly. We want to unleash the urgent optimism required to accelerate and scale the environmental innovations that will repair and regenerate our planet.”
The Foundation says The Prince of Wales, Prince William, is also keen “in bringing lasting change on disrupting the illegal wildlife trade, tackling mental health stigma, supporting our emergency service community and leading a global search for solutions to save our planet through The Earthshot Prize.”
The maiden award to be held in Africa was headlined by many showbiz personalities, including Billy Porter, Bonang Matheba, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, and Nomuzi Mabena.