Teams announced as 2026 Wege Prize winners share in $65,000 USD prize pool for sustainable entrepreneurship that address malnutrition, textile waste, and wastewater pollution
Wege Prize 2027 application period beginning August 3 also announced, with global field of teams expected to apply.
In an inspiring display of what innovation, determination, teamwork, and passion can accomplish with astute guidance, three student teams whose members all hail from the continent of Africa clinched the top spots at the finale of the months-long international design competition Wege Prize 2026.
Organized by Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD), Wege Prize 2026 demonstrates how young interdisciplinary teams of entrepreneurs dedicated to generating sustainable, scalable business models are leading by example, teaching the rest of the world how to create game-changing solutions to today’s “wicked problems.” At the 2026 Wege Prize Awards in May, five finalist teams presented solutions developed over nine months in four competition phases, during which teams interacted with Wege Prize judges to receive in-depth feedback for refining ideas and plans.
Top honors and a cash award of $30,000 USD went to finalist team Nutri-Más for the development of a process of blending whey, which is typically discarded by dairy producers, with locally grown sorghum, maize, and groundnuts to create a nutrient-dense composite flour for everyday cooking. The Wege Prize judges noted the circularity inherent in the Nutri-Más solution, which closes loops and builds circularity to tackle two substantial problems at once: malnutrition among children in South Sudan, and contamination of area water sources.
This, said the judges, best aligned with the three core principles of the circular economy as given to Wege Prize applicants: designing out waste and pollution, ensuring circularity of products and materials, and regenerating natural systems.
“The judges were also moved by the Nutri-Mas story,” says Gayle DeBruyn, a KCAD professor on the Wege Prize organizing team. “Bonded since youth, all five were raised together in a refugee camp in Kenya after fleeing South Sudan, and together they are channeling their resilience and collective ingenuity to address the same crisis that once forced them from their homes.”
The winning solutions have drawn attention to Wege Prize 2027 as its start draws near. The application period opens on August 3, and teams from around the world are expected to join in.
Innovators and Leaders
DeBruyn notes that seeing all five of this year’s top circular economy solutions coming from Africa was particularly exciting, and that how their projects evolved and grew under the judges’ guidance has led to viable pioneering pathways towards a circular economy. “Each is regenerative, restorative, and intentional when compared to the traditional, linear extract-produce-dispose model,” she says. “Our hope is that teams forming now around the world for Wege Prize 2027 are taking note, and learning from the inspiring examples of our finalists hailing from Africa.”
Wege Prize solutions regularly make real-world impacts, and importantly creating ripples of value beyond the solutions themselves. Turning the attention of potential leaders and changemakers to creating a circular economy seeds industries of all kinds in all sectors worldwide with talented, passionate young innovators and entrepreneurs who embrace, and bring with them, new ways of thinking, visioning, and collaborating across disciplines.
Most famously the 2023 Wege Prize winning team Banana Leather has since grown their submission into Banofi Leather, a manufacturer of a bio-based leather alternative made from banana crop waste that has garnered global media attention and won the prestigious and lucrative Hult Prize. Rutopia, the winning team of Wege Prize 2018, also earned Hult Prize honors for its comprehensive solution for creating tourism opportunities in Mexico that help regenerate nature and sustain small rural economies with unique and authentic experiences for travelers. Both Jinali Mody and Emiliano Iturriaga, leads of Banana Leather and Rutopia, respectively, have each earned spots in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
ABOUT THE 2026 WINNERS
Each sharing in the competition’s $65,000 USD total prize money, the five 2026 finalist teams emerged from an initial pool of 87 teams of five, representing 35 countries, 126 institutions of higher learning, and 195 distinct disciplines. After months of research, learning from expert judges, and clever experimentation, these five groups emerged from the initial field, earning top honors and cash prizes for their creativity, dedication, and hard work.
1st PLACE: Team Nutri-Más earned the top prize of $30,000 USD for a process that blends whey—typically discarded by dairy producers and a cause of water contamination—with locally grown sorghum, maize, and groundnuts to create a nutrient-dense composite flour for children facing malnutrition in Bor, South Sudan.
2nd PLACE: Team Agri Nova earned a $20,000 USD prize for developing a modular, low-impact, farming system to enable year-round production of grasshoppers, from which a protein-rich grasshopper oil can be extracted creating a much-needed, low-cost source of critical nutrition for low-resource communities.
3rd PLACE: Team Egret Pads earned $10,000 USD with a plan for turning banana crop waste into affordable, biodegradable sanitary pads for women in Rwanda’s low-resource communities, creating dignified access to menstrual health through a circular system that empowers women, supports farmers, and returns used pads back to the soil as fertilizer.
Finalist: Team Ecoscrubber earned $2,500 USD is creating a hybrid emission control and carbon-capture system designed to eliminate toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases from incinerators while transforming captured residues into valuable construction materials.
Finalist: Team UniThread EcoHusk earned $2,500 USD for reimagining discarded cocoa husks—which degrade soil and harbor pests and disease when left to rot—as raw materials for activated charcoal-based purification kits that can keep 95% of textile dye pollution out of water and wastewater streams.
Wege Prize is made possible through the support of The Wege Foundation and Ferris State University, opening these unique opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students around the world — and helping take strides toward realizing a circular economy.
Details on the winning teams are at www.wegeprize.org/news/meet-the-winners-of-wege-prize-2026.
About Wege Prize
Wege Prize, a West Michigan-born concept developed by Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD) Wege Center for Sustainable Design with the support of The Wege Foundation, is an annual competition that ignites games-changing solutions for the future by inspiring college students around the world to collaborate across institutional, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries and redesign the way economies work. To learn more, go to wegeprize.org.
About Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design
Located in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ferris State University’s Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD) is committed to creating lasting impact in West Michigan and beyond through collaborative partnerships, cultural innovation, and an educational model that prepares students for leadership in design, the visual arts, and art history; provides innovative, collaborative education that fosters intellectual growth and individual creativity; and promotes the ethical and civic responsibilities of artists and designers, locally and globally. For more information, please visit kcad.edu.
About The Wege Foundation
Planting seeds that develop leaders in economicology, health, education, and arts, and enhance the lives of people in West Michigan and around the world