The Climate Change Photo Essay Prize calls upon young photographers aged 18 to 30 from Africa and the global diaspora to document the environmental shifts unfolding around them, and the ways communities are living with, adapting to, and imagining beyond them.​

Launched as the flagship initiative of the ‘Road to 100 Million Climate Soldiers in Africa’s programme, co-run with African Women on Board, the Prize is built on a simple but powerful conviction: that photography can do what policy briefings cannot. It makes the personal stakes of climate change visible, immediate, and human.

Now in its third edition, the Prize has attracted over 670 photographs from more than 30 countries across two editions, with finalist works exhibited in New York, London, Lagos, and Nairobi. Each edition is judged through a rigorous blind process designed to ensure impartiality, with panels drawn from leading figures across the arts, culture, and climate sectors.

The 2026 edition carries the theme, “Lines of Survival: Living, Adapting, Imagining Tomorrow”, asking photographers to explore not only the pressures communities face, but the ingenuity with which they respond, and the futures they dare to imagine.