Zayed Sustainability Prize

Innovating for Humanity
Newsletter - October 2025

This month's newsletter celebrates our 2026 finalists, spotlights the Arctic Circle Assembly and explores stories of innovation driving meaningful impact across the globe.

Celebrating World Food Day

As the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization marks 80 years of action against hunger, World Food Day 2025 came with a powerful call to action: Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future. It reminds us that transforming food systems takes collaboration, innovation and hope. At the Zayed Sustainability Prize, we honour those turning ideas into impact, proving that change can begin with something as simple and universal as the way we eat.

Winners Unite for Cancer Care in Ghana

Since winning the Zayed Sustainability Prize in 2025, Periwinkle Technologies has been scaling its impact. The AI-health pioneer is now screening women in Ghana through advanced cancer diagnostics for earlier detection and faster treatment. Its expansion was supported by Wuntia Gomda, an alumnus of the Africa Leadership Academy, which won the Prize in 2019, after the two met at the Zayed Sustainability Prize Awards Ceremony last year. Together, they show how recognition can foster collaboration and deliver life-saving care to underserved communities.

Masdar Breaks Ground on World’s First Gigascale Round-the-Clock Renewable Energy Project

Masdar and EWEC have broken ground on a project that will deliver clean power around the clock by combining a 5.2 GW solar plant with a 19 GWh battery storage system - the largest and most advanced of its kind. Set to create more than 10,000 jobs and avoid 5.7 million tonnes of CO₂ each year, it’s a major milestone in powering the UAE’s AI-driven future and in reimagining what renewable energy can achieve.

Energy Innovation in Focus

The UAE is emerging as a living lab for sustainability, where collaboration between government, business and academia is accelerating the clean-energy transition. In an interview with Gulf Business, Dr Behjat Al Yousuf, Selection Committee Member of the Zayed Sustainability Prize, discusses how innovation and partnership are driving new solutions and how the initiative continues to champion technologies with global impact.

Designing the Future: Innovation, Investment and Equity

In Episode 53 of Voices of Sustainability, Kate Hampton, CEO of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and Jury member at the Prize, explores how reimagining finance and directing investment towards locally led solutions can unlock global opportunity and long-term resilience.