Prince William will be heading to South Africa in a few days to attend the Earthot Prize awards ceremony in this year’s host city, Cape Town.

The environmental competition is held annually and aims to discover, celebrate, accelerate and scale environmental solutions that can lead the world into harmony by 2030.

William, Earthshot’s founder and president, is the driving force behind the awards and has attended all the presentation events since launching the initiative in 2021.

The initiative was inspired by former US president John F Kennedy’s Moonshot project which set scientists the challenge of placing an astronaut on the moon and returning him safely – and in the process helping advance mankind’s achievements.

Every year, five winners are awarded a prize of £1million to scale their solutions into reality.

The five different categories , or Earthshots, are Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build A Waste-Free Land and Fix Our Climate.

However, even though not all of the 15 finalists receive the big prize, they do receive support from Earthshot Prize’s global alliance of partners.

This year’s event will be hosted in Cape Town, South Africa, which is where the future King will be headed to in a few days.

It will begin on Monday, November 4 but the main event will take place on Wednesday, November 6.

The entirety of the event will be a week-long celebration of innovation and impact.

The Princess of Wales is not expected to join William, as she will stay home to look after their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. She didn’t attend last year’s ceremony either, due to George’s school exams.

Last year, the ceremony was staged in Singapore, after prize-giving events were held in Boston in 2022 and London’s Alexandra Palace in 2021.

This year, aside from William being present, various famous faces will be joining the royal in Cape Town, including American actor Billy Porter and South African television presenter Bonang Matheba, who will host the ceremony.

Earthshot organisers have received almost 2,500 nominations with nearly 400 of those based in Africa, a continent with the lowest CO2 emissions but one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

This year’s finalists, from countries including France, Ghana, Indonesia and Nepal, are vying for a £1 million prize pot awarded to each winner.

Among those in the Build a Waste-Free World category is Keep It Cool, a Kenyan-based company using solar-powered refrigeration to help cut harvest waste for farmers.

The Fix Our Climate category features American company Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems, which is converting excess heat, produced during the making of steel or cement, into electricity.

While Build Up Nepal, a social enterprise, has developed an earthquake-resilient brick with 75% lower carbon emissions compared to traditional clay-fired bricks.

UK start-up NatureMetrics, a Protect and Restore Nature finalist, is using environmental DNA technology to identify species populations and report environmental and conservation impacts.