Africa shines at The Earthshot Prize as Lagos Fashion Week among the winners

Africa’s creative and environmental leadership took centre stage at this year’s Earthshot Prize Awards, where Lagos Fashion Week was named the 2025 Winner in the Build a Waste-Free World category.

The recognition not only celebrates Nigeria’s creative economy but also marks a defining moment for the continent’s growing influence in global sustainability movements.

The Earthshot Prize, founded in 2020 by HRH Prince William, is widely regarded as one of the world’s most impactful environmental awards.

Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s “Moonshot” challenge of the 1960s, the Prize was designed as a 10-year mission to find and scale the world’s most innovative solutions to repair and protect the planet.

Each year, five winners are selected across five thematic categories

•  Protect and Restore Nature,
• Clean Our Air,
• Revive Our Oceans,
• Build a Waste-Free World,
• Fix Our Climate.

Each winner receives £1 million to advance or replicate their solutions, as well as global visibility and long-term support through the Earthshot network.

The 2025 Awards Night was held at the futuristic Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, was a celebration of human ingenuity and environmental action.

HRH Prince William, Founder and President of The Earthshot Prize, reflected on this shared sense of optimism:

“When I founded The Earthshot Prize in 2020, we had a ten-year goal to make this the decade in which we transformed our world for the better,” he said.

“We set out to tackle environmental issues head-on and make real, lasting changes that would protect life on Earth.

It was a mission driven by the kind of extraordinary optimism we have felt here tonight, from these innovators.

Their work is the proof we need that progress is possible. Their stories are the inspiration that gives us courage.

This year’s five winners exemplified the Prize’s mission to turn inspiration into impact:

• Green (Brazil) for Protect and Restore Nature;
• The City of Bogotá (Colombia) for Clean Our Air;
• The High Seas Treaty (Global) for Revive Our Oceans;
• Lagos Fashion Week (Nigeria) for Build a Waste-Free World;
• Friendship (Bangladesh) for Fix Our Climate.

Fashion as a Force for Environmental Change

Founded by Nigerian entrepreneur Omoyemi Akerele, Lagos Fashion Week has redefined what it means to be a cultural and environmental force in Africa.

Over the past decade, it has evolved from a showcase of African creativity into a platform that champions sustainability, transparency, and local innovation within the fashion value chain.

Every designer wishing to show at Lagos Fashion Week must demonstrate a commitment to responsible practice from sourcing and dyeing materials to production, packaging, and transport.

“The recognition from The Earthshot Prize is not just about me or Lagos Fashion Week, but about the community of designers, artisans, and young people who continue to prove that African fashion has something powerful and lasting to offer the world,” Omoyemi AkereleFounder of Lagos Fashion Week.

“Fashion has the power to create jobs, preserve culture, and transform lives. That is why we do this work, and why being nominated as a Finalist will allow us to keep pushing for a future where fashion is not just beautiful, but also meaningful and responsible.”

These requirements have reshaped brand behaviour across the continent, embedding sustainability into everyday operations, not just the runway.

By winning The Earthshot Prize, Lagos Fashion Week will receive £1 million to scale its vision of a circular fashion economy across the continent.

By 2030, it plans to replicate its sustainability model across five major African fashion weeks, beginning with Kigali, Dakar, and Accra.

The initiative aims to promote local sourcing, reduce textile waste, and create fair economic opportunities for artisans and small producers.

As Akerele has consistently emphasized, sustainability in Africa’s fashion industry is not a borrowed concept; it is rooted in cultural heritage and resourcefulness.

Many African designers have long practiced upcycling, natural dyeing, and small-batch production out of necessity and tradition.

Lagos Fashion Week has provided the structure and visibility to scale those practices into a continental movement.

 A Global Stage, an African Moment

Lagos Fashion Week’s recognition signals a broader truth: Africa is no longer on the sidelines of global climate action.

From renewable energy startups in Kenya to waste-to-wealth initiatives in Ghana and Rwanda, the continent is producing some of the most dynamic, community-driven models for sustainability.

At the Earthshot stage in Rio, Africa’s representation carried symbolic power.

Lagos Fashion Week’s triumph was not just about fashion; it was a celebration of a continent charting its own path toward environmental transformation.

And there’s a great deal we can learn from their determination, their vision for scale, and their unyielding belief that we can create a better world.”

From Rio to Lagos: Climate Comes Home

For Christiana Figueres, Chair of The Earthshot Prize Board of Trustees and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, the 2025 ceremony in Rio carried deep significance.

“There feels a real symmetry in being here in Rio this year. The climate has come home. So much of climate progress started in this city in 1992. To be here now for The Earthshot Prize Summit and Awards Night at the halfway point of this critical decade and ten years on from Paris feels momentous,” she said.

“As we build a global legacy, these Winners are proof that the spirit of collective action born here in Rio continues to grow stronger, more determined, and more urgent than ever. Their 2030 aims are deeply ambitious, but their impact to date, their plans in place, and their tenacity fuel my optimism. I am in no doubt that 2030 will be a better world because of them.”

Her words resonated strongly with the African delegation and supporters in attendance, underscoring how the continent’s innovators are contributing to global progress through uniquely local pathways.

 Africa’s Role in the Decade of Action

For Africa, Lagos Fashion Week’s win is more than a creative triumph; it is a statement of self-determination.

It reinforces that African innovators are not merely adapting to global sustainability standards but setting them, drawing on cultural heritage, local materials, and community-based systems to build circular economies that work.

From the vibrant markets of Lagos to the emerging design hubs of Kigali and Accra, a new generation of African creators is transforming fashion into a vehicle for environmental justice and economic empowerment.

The Earthshot Prize has now placed that movement firmly on the global map.

In the words of the Prize’s guiding vision, this is about building a “waste-free world.”

And in 2025, it is Lagos, and by extension Africa, showing the world exactly how that future can be designed, stitched, and worn.