Prince William takes his Earthshot Prize to South Africa! Prince of Wales' fourth annual awards ceremony will be held in Cape Town this November

• The Earthshot Prize will travel to Cape Town, South Africa this November 
• READ MORE: Not a good look, Harry: Critics claim Duke made transatlantic dash for 30 minute meeting with his cancer-stricken father knowing that he would be seen ‘enjoying glitzy Super Bowl festivities’ just 24 hours later

Prince William’s fourth Earthshot Prize will travel to Cape Town, South Africa this November, raising the prospect of a royal visit to the country.

The Prince of Wales, 41, has attended every annual awards ceremony for his environmental initiative to date, including events in London in 2021, Boston in 2022 and Singapore in 2023.

His wife Kate, 42, who is currently recovering from abdominal surgery at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor, and is not expected to return to official duties until after Easter, travelled alongside her husband to the States.

However, she missed out on the most recent event in Singapore after staying home to help her eldest son Prince George, 10, with his ‘first set of major exams’.

It’s unclear whether the Prince, whose father King Charles is currently battling cancer, and the Princess of Wales will travel to South Africa for Earthshot Week 2024. MailOnline has contacted Kensington Palace.

Prince William ‘s fourth Earthshot Prize will travel to Cape Town, South Africa this November

Across five days of events, The Earthshot Prize will celebrate the groundbreaking work of fifteen global environmental solutions.

It will convene leading innovators, Earthshot Alumni, partners, investors and philanthropists for inspiring conversations and action on catalysing solutions to protect and restore our planet.

The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious global environmental prize which aims to discover and help scale the world’s most innovative climate and environmental solutions to protect and restore our planet.

The Prize is cantered around five ‘Earthshots’; simple but aspirational goals to ensure our communities, oceans and ecosystems can thrive together in harmony for generations to come.

Over the coming months, a rigorous selection process will unearth fifteen finalists from around the world, of whom five will be awarded a £1million prize to scale their solutions, during the ceremony in Cape Town.

Hannah Jones, CEO of The Earthshot Prize said: ‘This is the Earthshot Decade, a decade in which we must, by 2030, reduce CO2 emissions by over 40 percent, and protect 30 percent of nature, oceans, and freshwater.

‘The nominations to The Earthshot Prize remind us that human ingenuity, grit and determination can turn the seemingly impossible into the new normal.

‘We’re delighted to be working with changemakers and partners across Africa to spotlight the incredible innovation emerging across the continent, to convene courageous conversations about scale and finance, and to partner with young creators and filmmakers to tell the story of changemakers across Africa.’

Nearly 400 nominees for this year’s Prize are Africa-based, highlighting the trailblazing creativity and innovation across the continent with the potential to inspire optimism and provide pathways to transformative change around the world.

The Prince of Wales, Patron of London’s Air Ambulance Charity, attends the London’s Air Ambulance charity gala dinner at Raffles London at The OWO on Wednesday

Despite contributing the least to global warming and having the lowest emissions, Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the impacts of climate change.

In 2022 alone, more than 110 million people across Africa were directly affected by weather, climate, and water-related hazards according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Earthshot Week will begin with The Prize’s annual Awards Ceremony, an evening of extraordinary storytelling and star-studded performances, celebrating the work of the fifteen Earthshot Prize finalists.

The ceremony will be followed by Earthshot+, a day of thought-provoking conversations aimed at multiplying the impact of The Earthshot Prize Winners and Finalists.

The Prize has recently completed its annual nominations process, culminating in nearly 2,500 entries submitted from 432 Official Nominators from around the world, doubling the nominations from any previous year.

Nearly 400 of the 2024 nominations are headquartered in Africa, three times more than in any previous set of nominations.

The Prince and Princess of Wales arrive for the second annual Earthshot Prize Awards Ceremony in 2022

The Prize’s first three cohorts of 45 Finalists have already driven incredible impact to repair and regenerate our planet with more than 1.5 million people benefiting directly from their solutions.

Over 7,000 hectares of land and almost 2.1 million hectares of ocean have been protected or restored, while over 35,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions have been reduced, avoided or sequestered.  The 2024 Earthshot Prize finalists will be unveiled in September.

The announcement comes after The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden revealed the Earthshot Prize charity pulled in a mammoth £22.4 million in income in its first nine months alone.

At the time of its launch, Earthshot was administered by the Royal Foundation, established by Princes William and Harry back in 2009 to further their various charitable ambitions.

But in 2022 the prize was hived off, to be administered as an entirely separate charity.

While the Royal Foundation transferred £8.6 million, the remainder came from a variety of sources, as accounts just published by the Charity Commission disclose.

Donations totalled £7 million, while ‘gifts in kind’ accounted for just over £3 million, and a grant from the American Friends of the Royal Foundation for another £2.7 million.

The remaining five per cent – £1.1 million – came in sponsorship and from licensing income.

Read more