Mpumelelo Buthelezi wins the 2026 Africa Soft Power Climate storytelling fellowship & photo essay prize
South African photographer Mpumelelo Buthelezi has been named the 2026 winner of the Africa Soft Power Climate Storytelling Fellowship & Photo Essay Prize for E'Plazini: A Place to Call Home for Waste Collectors.
The series follows waste pickers living in the Dryhook informal settlement near Soweto. In his accompanying text, Buthelezi describes a community that has spent years collecting and sorting discarded plastic, cardboard, glass and metal for sale to recycling companies. He estimates that some 85,000 people across South Africa make a living as waste collectors or recyclers, working largely within the informal economy.
Buthelezi receives the US$2,000 Climate Storytelling Fellowship award. Four other photographers have been selected as finalists and receive US$500 each: Kevin Ochieng Onyango and Brian Ongoro, both from Kenya; Vanessa Mulondo of Uganda; and Nicolas Vava of Togo.
Their five essays were selected under the 2026 theme, Lines of Survival: Living, Adapting, Imagining Tomorrow, which invited photographers aged 18-30 from Africa and the global diaspora to consider how people are living with environmental change, how they are adapting, and what the future might look like. The resulting work moves between waste, drought, flooding, fishing and coastal erosion.
Originally published by African Business.