BY OKAFOR AUGUSTINE IZUCHUKWU
The Earthshot Prize, a global environmental prize to discover, accelerate, and scale ground-breaking solutions to repair and regenerate the planet, has begun its 2023 search for breakthrough solutions to solve the globe’s biggest environmental challenges. MultiChoice, the official African broadcast partner and member of The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance, is issuing a call for entries from African organizations, businesses, governments, and individuals who are doing scalable and impactful work in this capacity.
Potential nominees can enter into any of the five categories of the Earthshot Prize, including: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean our Air, Revive our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World and Fix our Climate. The Prize is awarded annually to five winners, each receiving a US$1.2 million/ R 20 million (£1 million) prize grant to scale their projects.
Each year, The Earthshot Prize launches a global search for breakthrough solutions, with a worldwide network of more than 350 nominating individuals and organizations from 66 countries tasked with ushering the process through. As an official nominator, MultiChoice has established an official entry portal (https://bit.ly/3X3Rr8Q)and asks that all submissions be submitted by 27 January 2023. Representatives from MultiChoice will then review these entries and officially nominate selections directly to The Earthshot Prize.
“By entering this prestigious prize, African innovators will be afforded the platform to pitch their solutions, inspire other corporates to join the fight against climate change and motivate governments to prioritize climate change as part of their national agendas,” said Imtiaz Patel, Chairman, MultiChoice Group. “If you have a worthy intervention whose solution makes significant progress towards achieving any of the five Earthshots, we urge you to send in your nomination and be part of the solution.”
When The Earthshot Prize was first launched in 2021, three African organizations were selected as finalists namely, Sanergy (from Kenya), Reeddi Capsules (from Nigeria) and Pole Pole Foundation (from the Democratic Republic of Congo).
On December 2, 2022, Prince William and The Earthshot Prize revealed the 2022 winners. African based Mukuru Clean Stoves, a start-up providing cleaner-burning stoves to women in Kenya to reduce unhealthy indoor pollution and provide a safer way to cook, won the coveted environmental prize during the inspirational awards ceremony hosted in Boston.
In addition to the US$1.2 million/ R 20 million (£1 million) prize, Mukuru Clean Stoves will benefit from a global network of professional and technical support to scale their work.
This includes access to resources across numerous professions and sectors including manufacturing, retail, supply chains, legal advice, digital technology, business strategy and government relations via The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance. The Prize will allow Mukuru Clean Stoves to create an even cleaner stove that burns ethanol, and within three years, they hope to reach one million customers. Within the decade, they hope to expand their impact to ten million people all over Africa.
The final five winners were selected from a group of 15 finalists from 10 different countries
by The Earthshot Prize Council – a global team of influential individuals committed to championing positive action in the environmental space.
The five Earthshot Prize Winners for 2022 are:
•Protect and Restore Nature: Kheyti, India: A pioneering solution for local smallholder farmers to reduce costs, increase yields and protect livelihoods in a country on the frontlines of climate change.
•Clean our Air: Mukuru Clean Stoves, Kenya: A start-up providing cleaner-burning stoves to women in Kenya to reduce unhealthy indoor pollution and provide a safer way to cook.
•Revive our Oceans: Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia: An inspiring women-led programme that combines 60,000 years of indigenous knowledge with digital technologies to protect land and sea.
•Build a Waste-free World: Notpla, United Kingdom: A circular solution creating an alternative to plastic packaging from seaweed.
•Fix our Climate: 44.01, Oman: Childhood friends who have developed an innovative technique to turn CO2 into rock, and permanently store it underground.
At MultiChoice, we are driven by our Purpose to Enrich Lives, therefore the future of the African continent, its natural resources, and our communities require that we work together with our partners to create a world where everyone thrives for generations to come. It is for this reason that we are not only urging African innovators to enter the environmental prize, but we have also partnered with The Earthshot Prize to help accelerate and spotlight the ingenuity and ambition of innovators, activists and scientists across Africa who are working to address the climate crisis on the African continent and around the world.
