The Prince of Wales will walk down the green carpet at the Earthshot Prize Awards in Cape Town next week, as he prepares for his "Super Bowl moment" with this year's show "going above and beyond" anything that has been done before.
The four-day solo trip for Prince William, 42, will be his first official visit to South Africa since 2010 and his first to Africa since 2018 when he visited Namibia, Tanzania and Kenya.
Kicking off on Monday, William will meet young environmentalists from across Africa and Southeast Asia who are taking part in the inaugural Earthshot Prize Climate Leaders Youth Programme.
On day two, the Prince will also hold an audience with the President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, take part in a fireside chat during Earthshot+ Day and attend the United for Wildlife Global Summit.
William, who founded the organisation in 2013 to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, is set to deliver a landmark speech on nature, the environment and his support for rangers at the event.
© GettyThe centrepiece of the Prince's time in Africa will be the Earthshot Prize Awards, taking place in a bespoke eco-dome created for the ceremony, which uses renewable energy from a local wind farm.
Joining William at the star-studded bash on Wednesday will be supermodels Heidi Klum and Winnie Harlow, while award-winning actor and singer Billy Porter and TV presenter Bonang Matheba will play host as the five Earthshot winners are announced.
© GettyThere will also be special performances from Afrobeats star Davido, Tanzanian musical artist Diamond Platnumz, DJ Uncle Waffles and Grammy Award winner Lebo M, who is most famous for his vocals on The Lion King soundtrack.
In another world first, the awards will be broadcast live through a special partnership with YouTube and across 50 African countries through the Multichoice network.
The Prince sported a ten-year-old dark green blazer by Alexander McQueen at the awards in Singapore last year and sustainability is set to be the focus of the green carpet again in South Africa.
© GettyHannah Jones, CEO of the Earthshot Prize, tells HELLO!: "We're going to be shining a light on sustainable fashion throughout the week. The roadmap to regeneration guides our priorities in the five Earth shots and fashion comes out as a very important cross cutting theme fashion.
"Currently, the fashion industry accounts for ten per cent of all carbon emissions and has a huge impact on landfill and waste, particularly in the continent of Africa, where we are shipping our second hand and old clothing, and it's ending up in the landfills.
"So we need to see some radical changes happen in the world of fashion, and we have also been seeing incredible innovations coming through our pipeline of nominations."
© GettyThe finalists, from countries including France, Ghana, Indonesia and Nepal, are vying for a £1 million prize pot awarded to each winner of five categories, with the money earmarked to develop their ideas.
The five categories, or Earthshots are: protect and restore nature; clean our air; revive our oceans; build a waste-free world; and fix our climate.
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 helped advance technology.
The fourth awards in Cape Town will be a full-circle moment for William as Africa is the place that inspired him to set up the Earthshot Prize.
A Kensington Palace spokesperson says: "It was a trip to Namibia in September 2018 that the Prince of Wales was inspired by projects which were working to protect the environment and support local communities.
"The Prince was frustrated by the pessimism and despair of the global debate and wanted to find a way to spotlight and scale the innovative solutions he was seeing on the ground. And so the Earthshot Prize was born."
