Green Growth Africa Emerges First To Win Okayama Award In West Africa 

A Nigerian-owned Pan-African non-profit organisation, Green Growth Africa Sustainability Network (GreenGrowthAfrica), has emerged winner of Okayama Award for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the Pratt & Whitney E-STEM Award.

The development makes the organisation the first in Nigeria and West Africa and the third in Africa to win the prestigious Okayama ESD Award, which is given to a maximum of two organisations from across the globe yearly.

The organisation won the awards in the same month for its giant strides in promoting environmental education across the African continent and in extension the global community.

Bestowed based on global competition and evaluations by globally-reputed organisations, the awards came on the heel of the organisation’s initiatives, which educate and empower youth with hands-on and practice-oriented environmental education in African secondary schools.

“So far, our Environmental Education Programme has impacted more than 3,000 students, 44 teachers, and 156 families in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, and Uganda including outreaches to schools in United States of America and Italy,” Executive Director of the organisation, Dr. Adedoyin Adeleke, said in a release.

Launched in 2015, the ESD Okayama Award was initiated by the UNESCO Learning City, Okayama in Japan, to recognise and showcase ESD initiatives from across the globe based on vision, collaboration, integration, empowerment, future strategy, and creativity.

The ESD Okayama Award showcases good ESD practices worldwide and promotes the advancement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as ESD is a key enabler of the achievement of all SDG targets.

According to the award steering committee, the initiative received 157 submissions from 51 countries. Based on its outstanding contribution to Environmental Education Programme to education for sustainable development and significant contributions to the SDGs, Green Growth Africa was selected from a pool of 157 submissions from 51 countries and regions to become one of the two winners of the 2022 edition of the globally-reputed and highly competitive award.

The Okayama ESD Promotion Council had said the 2022 entries and submissions represented the highest number of applications for the award since the inception in 2015.

The NGO was also selected by Pratt & Whitney and the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) as a winner of the first-ever Pratt & Whitney Global E-STEM Awards.

Pratt & Whitney’s chief transformation and strategy officer, Satheeshkumar Kumarasingam, said 13 non-profit organisations in 11 countries were selected from a pool of nearly 175 applicants spanning 40 countries selected by a panel of judges from Pratt & Whitney and NAAEE.