Financial Times/MIGA Africa Sustainable Futures Awards 2026 – YOA

Deadline: June 30, 2026

Applications are open for the Financial Times/MIGA Africa Sustainable Futures Awards 2026. The Financial Times and the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) have launched the third version of the Africa Sustainable Futures Awards, a significant annual programme that promotes revolutionary, non-public sector options to growth challenges in Africa.

The Africa Sustainable Futures Awards showcase commercially viable initiatives that present transformative, resilient and scalable options, and deal with not simply present wants but additionally the effectively-being of future generations, at a time when it’s extra vital than ever to construct self-sustaining fashions for development. 

Building on the success of final yr’s programme, which drew greater than 300 entries, particular consideration on this third yr might be given to initiatives that transfer past conventional growth fashions by successfully mobilising capital, mitigating dangers, and driving industrial and operational excellence.

Categories

• Access to Energy: This award recognises revolutionary, non-public sector tasks that considerably advance entry to the electrical energy that households, agriculture and business require to spice up livelihoods, output and jobs. They are additionally in search of options that use superior applied sciences, financing and/or danger mitigation mechanisms to demonstrably increase vitality effectivity, optimisation and storage, whether or not on the stage of the facility grid or additional down the worth chain.
• Critical Infrastructure (non-Energy): This award highlights transformative, non-public sector initiatives that construct or modernise the important infrastructure required for Africa’s financial growth, together with transport, logistics, tourism, water and sanitation, healthcare and digital connectivity. They are in search of initiatives that reveal artistic financing and danger mitigation methods, catalyse funding, construct native capability, and generate high quality jobs throughout these important sectors.
• Agribusiness: This award recognises excellent innovation in African agribusiness that transforms farming, considerably boosts meals manufacturing, and actively builds vibrant, sustainable rural economies. They are in search of tasks that successfully combine native companies and smallholder farmers into sturdy worth chains that assist smallholders transfer from subsistence to surplus, whereas producing substantial re-funding and expert employment.
• Manufacturing Champions: This award celebrates manufacturing leaders throughout Africa which can be considerably driving job creation and remodeling native economies and communities. They are in search of operationally robust initiatives that promote know-how switch and abilities growth and successfully combine native suppliers and companies into resilient worth chains.
• Judges’ Award for Excellence: This prize recognises the initiative that, within the opinion of the judging panel, stands aside among the many winners of all core classes for its stage of innovation, affect, replicability, monetary viability, and sustainability within the context of Africa’s growth.
• Innovation Showcase: This particular class is designed to focus on floor-breaking early stage tasks in Africa which have the potential, with extra funding, to have a transformative affect in sectors core to financial growth. They welcome revolutionary and dynamic entrepreneurial initiatives, with a strong path to profitability, that promise breakthrough options to among the thorniest challenges going through Africa.

Eligibility

• Open to all non-public sector organisations.
• Only initiatives launched in 2016 or later might be eligible. Each class would require entrants to satisfy a selected minimal income stage. 

Application

The winners might be introduced at a particular Awards Dinner on October 22, 2026, concluding the FT’s thirteenth Africa Summit in London, a significant occasion that brings collectively African authorities, enterprise, and finance leaders with international traders and business companions to debate tips on how to drive ahead the continent’s financial transformation. 

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to Africa Sustainable Futures Awards.