The City of Cape Town has been announced as a winning city in the global Bloomberg ‘Mayor’s Challenge’ 2025, securing a $1 million prize, which will be used towards community co-designed waste management solutions in informal settlements.

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis’s winning entry was selected from 630 applications for the global competition. Each of the 24 winning cities receives $1 million as well as operational support and additional funds to scale up innovations.

Cape Town’s entry was for a project aiming to improve waste management solutions in partnership with informal settlement residents to reduce illegal dumping and achieve cleaner, healthier communities.

Hill-Lewis says cleaning up informal settlements is a problem that has concerned him for years.

“That’s why I nominated this project for consideration for the Mayor’s Challenge Prize. We are most appreciative of this prize money and support, and we will use the money to scale up our pilot project on waste management in informal settlement communities. Our project recognises that success can only be achieved with the insights and collaboration of residents. We are energised by this global recognition as we work towards better, cleaner, more dignified living conditions for all residents, in line with our mission to build a city of hope for all.”

The initiative was piloted in Dunoon, and will feed into the development of a scaled-up solution, including:

• community-led waste separation-at-source projects;
• design and testing of greywater diversion infrastructure systems;
• and exploration of a new model for informal settlement waste and cleansing services.

The challenge took place over two phases, with Cape Town competing among 50 cities during the finalist phase where ideas are pressure-tested and ultimately chosen for ‘novelty, potential impact, and strength of implementation plans.’

Cape Town’s project aims to transform how waste services are contracted and operated in informal contexts in a way that can be replicated across Cape Town, and even in other municipalities and metros.

🇿🇦 Excited to announce that Cape Town has been named as a winning city in the Bloomberg ‘Mayor’s Challenge’ 2025, with a prize of $1 million! 🎉

We will use this prize money to fund a project we’re running with residents to co-design better waste management in low income… https://t.co/QjLru2IohL

— Geordin Hill-Lewis (@geordinhl) February 26, 2026