MTN and WWF Reopen Africa PachiPanda Challenge as Green Innovation Push Widens Across the Continent
MTN and the World Wide Fund for Nature have reopened applications for the Africa PachiPanda Challenge, the pair’s continent-spanning competition for young entrepreneurs building environmental solutions. The new cycle lands as several participating countries stagger their own submission windows through October, reflecting how the programme has grown from a single-market pilot into a multi-country pipeline for climate-focused youth ventures.
A Programme With Zambian Roots
The Challenge traces back to 2022, when MTN Zambia Foundation and WWF Zambia launched the original PachiPanda Innovation Challenge to surface local ideas on climate adaptation, water management, and waste reduction. Its results were strong enough that the two organisations scaled the model into the Africa PachiPanda Challenge, extending it to Nigeria, South Africa, and Cameroon by 2024, before Uganda joined the following year. Eswatini has now become the newest addition, with its inaugural national edition launching this September.
Momentum has been building steadily. The 2025 continental round drew 3,436 applications and advanced 158 finalists through pitch training, according to figures MTN has published on the programme’s page — a scale that signals the Challenge has moved well past experimental status.
What Applicants Are Being Asked to Solve
The competition targets youth aged 18 to 35, along with early-stage and youth-led SMEs, and asks them to design ventures around locally specific environmental problems rather than generic sustainability pitches. Themes differ by market: South Africa’s 2026 statements span nature-based enterprise, circular-economy waste solutions, water security, and regenerative agriculture, while Uganda’s edition centres on ecosystem restoration, green livelihoods, biodiversity protection, and digital tools for the green economy. Eswatini’s inaugural round, grounded in the country’s 2021 State of the Environment Report and its National Climate Agenda, focuses on regenerative farming, watershed protection, invasive-species management, and circular waste and energy systems.
Timelines vary by country and are already in motion. South Africa’s window runs to October 4, Uganda’s closes September 30, and Eswatini is accepting entries until September 18. Nigeria’s 2026 round, run with the Nigeria Conservation Foundation, UNDP Nigeria, and Deloitte Nigeria, had already closed its application portal by late August, with finalist announcements continuing through October.
Backing From Two Established Institutions
The organisers describe the initiative as a deliberate pipeline for green enterprise. In materials published on MTN’s sustainability pages, the partners say the programme is intended to cultivate innovative African green businesses, support youth-led ventures, and invest in the continent’s sustainable future by pairing entrepreneurial training with seed funding.
For WWF, the Challenge sits inside its “Making Nature Count” Africa Strategy and its Mobilising More for Climate programme, both aimed at getting the value of natural capital reflected in decisions made by governments, corporations, and financial institutions. For MTN, it forms part of the operator’s broader “Ambition 2030” sustainability commitments, positioning climate entrepreneurship as one strand of its wider corporate responsibility agenda alongside its existing rural connectivity and digital-skills programmes.
Why It Matters for the Region
Winners in each country typically receive cash prizes — figures differ by market and currency, from naira and Ugandan shilling awards to fixed dollar prizes in Eswatini — along with mentorship and a place at a continental finale in South Africa, where national champions compete against each other. For Nigerian founders in particular, the Challenge adds to a thin but growing set of climate-tech-specific funding routes, at a time when agriculture, waste management, and urban flooding remain persistent and underfunded problems across the country’s fast-growing cities.
Full country-specific rules, deadlines, and challenge statements are available on MTN’s PachiPanda Challenge page, which also lists profiles of 2025’s continental winners.
