City of Cape Town is thrilled to host the Prince Wales for The Earthshot Prize Awards Ceremony on November 06, 2024. It is a prestigious global prize giving ceremony that aims to discover, spotlight and scale the world’s most innovative climate and environmental solutions.
This is for the first time that the annual celebration of The Earthshot Prize will be held in South Africa. It will be followed by the events in London in 2021, Boston in 2022 and Singapore in 2023.
Reportedly, a five-week countdown was posted on Kensington Palace’s social media accounts. Mayor Geordin Hill Lewis said that they look forward to welcome the Prince of Wales to Cape Town for the prestigious global prize-giving ceremony.
The Earthshot Prize is all about innovation on the biggest environmental and climate issues of the time. Lewis expressed that they are proud to be associated with such an event as a leading city for environmental protection and innovation on the African continent.
As per the sources, the 15th Earthshot Prize finalists hail from six continents that include three African finalists who represented Kenya and Ghana. The five winners will be awarded with £1 million (that counts as approx. R23, 800,000,00) prize, each to scale their solutions, during the ceremony in Cape Town.
For this year, almost 400 nominees are from Africa. It highlights the trailblazing creativity and innovation across the continent with the potential to inspire optimism and provide pathways to transformative change around the world.
One of the most inspiring finalists out of 2023 was ABALOBI of Cape Town. It was a non-profit partnership between fishers and scientists that aim to protect small-scale fishing communities. It is also arming their customers with better information about the origin of their seafood.
The Prize consisted of first three cohorts of 45 finalists of Earthshots from editions 2021-23 that have already driven the incredible impact to repair and regenerate the planet with more than 1.5 million people that benefits directly from their solutions.
More than 7,000 hectares of land and almost 2.1 million hectares of ocean are being protected or restored, as of now. Whereas, over 35,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions have been reduced, avoided or sequestered.
Additionally, £15 million of prize money has awarded, along with £75 million of direct and indirect funding that has been catalysed through The Earthshot Prize network. Finalists of 2023 Prize ceremony are well on their way to create a similar impact.