OPEC Fund Youth Entrepreneurship Award 2026 ($100,000 award) – YOA

Deadline: April 12, 2026

Applications are open for the OPEC Fund Youth Entrepreneurship Award 2026. The Annual Award for Development (AAD) acknowledges excellent contributions to sustainable growth. First launched in 2006, the AAD has developed in OPEC Fund’s fiftieth Anniversary 12 months to raised replicate in the present day’s growth priorities and rising alternatives.

As part of the OPEC Fund’s Annual Award for Development, the Youth Entrepreneurship Award acknowledges entrepreneurs below 30 years of age who’re advancing modern and impactful options to satisfy the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in OPEC Fund companion nations or member nations.

Award Categories

• The US$100,000 award goals to highlight younger changemakers whose work demonstrates robust growth relevance, innovation and potential for sustainable impression.

Eligibility

• Nominations have to be submitted by a person or establishment with direct information of the nominated group’s work.
• To guarantee independence and integrity:
  • The nominating social gathering might not be an worker of, or obtain remuneration from, the nominated group. 
  • Board members might nominate, offered they obtain no compensation for his or her providers.
• The nominating social gathering might not be:
  • A member of the family, worker or founding father of the nominated group.
  • An worker or board member of the OPEC Fund.

Nominee Eligibility

• Youth Entrepreneurship Award: younger entrepreneurs advancing options in renewable vitality, meals safety, or local weather motion from OPEC Fund companion and member nations.

Evaluation Criteria

Eligible nominations can be evaluated in opposition to the next standards:

• Strategic alignment: Projects should align with the OPEC Fund’s strategic core goals, together with Driving Climate Innovation and a Just Transition, Promoting Sustainable Development by South–South Cooperation and Building Resilient and Equitable Societies, and contribute to a number of of the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Innovation: The challenge should introduce new options or approaches to growth challenges. This consists of approaches that will exist elsewhere however which might be being utilized in a brand new context or setting.
• Measurable impression: The challenge should reveal important, proof-primarily based optimistic growth outcomes or clear potential to attain such impression. Applicants ought to present supporting knowledge and documentation, together with baselines, outputs, outcomes and, the place potential, impartial evaluations or different quantifiable metrics.
• Replicability and scalability: The challenge ought to present robust potential to develop in scope or scale, enabling its impression to be replicated inside and throughout areas or nations.
• Sustainability: The challenge ought to reveal monetary, institutional and environmental sustainability, guaranteeing that growth advantages will be maintained over time. 
• Equity and inclusion: Priority is given to options that promote fairness and the inclusion of susceptible or underserved teams, foster synergies throughout sectors (equivalent to well being and schooling or agriculture, water and local weather resilience), and, the place potential, contribute to job creation or youth empowerment.
• Ethical requirements and compliance: Applicants should adjust to relevant environmental and social safeguards and should have no document of significant violations, together with human rights abuses, corruption or associated misconduct. 

Application

The nomination form, together with a nomination motivation letter (a one-web page letter explaining why the nominee stands out of their class and the way the award funds will profit these they serve) needs to be despatched to [email protected]

For extra info, go to OPEC Fund Youth Entrepreneurship Award.