The Foundation of Contemporary Arts (FOTEA) has announced the winners of three major photography competitions celebrating visual storytelling across East Africa. The organization revealed the recipients of the 14th Uganda Press Photo Award (UPPA), the 8th East African Photography Award (EAPA), and the 10th Young Photographer Award (YPA). Through its ongoing partnership with Fujifilm, this year's winners will receive Fujifilm cameras and kit lenses as prizes.
The East African Photography Award, now in its eighth year, welcomes visual storytellers from across the region, including Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. The competition celebrates both documentary and artistic work that captures the contemporary lives of people, environmental stories, and other narratives of life in East Africa. This year's competition saw remarkable growth, with Sudanese photographers taking center stage and demonstrating their talent and resilience despite challenging circumstances in their homeland.
Amar Abdalla from Sudan claimed the top Stories prize for his compelling work titled "Temporary Homes." Selected from a highly competitive pool of submissions across the region, Abdalla's collection of photographs serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences of civil unrest. His work explores his family's displacement due to war, highlighting their daily experiences in their new environment and documenting how they adapt to their temporary home while preserving vivid memories of their previous life. The story also examines how displaced families cope with the challenges of relocation and find ways to live and belong even in temporary spaces. Abdalla receives a Fujifilm X-T5 camera and XF 16-50 kit, courtesy of Fujifilm Middle East FZE.
Katumba Badru from Uganda earned recognition in multiple categories with his portrait "What Next," which won the Planet category and was also selected as the overall Single Image winner. This powerful photograph captures people searching for their loved ones following devastating flooding and landslides in Masugu on November 29, 2024. Through this poignant portrait, viewers can feel the profound sense of loss experienced in the aftermath of natural disaster. Badru will receive a Fujifilm X-T50 camera and XF 16-50 kit, courtesy of Fujifilm Middle East FZE.
The EAPA 2025 judging panel consisted of distinguished regional and international photography professionals. The jury included Martin Kharumwa, photographer and gallerist from Uganda; Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, photojournalist from South Africa; Maggie Soladay, photo editor at The Open Society Foundations from the United States; Luis Tato, photo editor at AFP from Spain/Kenya; and Sana Ullah, senior program officer at National Geographic Society from the United States.
The Uganda Press Photo Award continues its longstanding tradition of recognizing excellence in documentary photography and photojournalism within Uganda. Timothy Akolamazima responded to this year's call with his story "Beyond the Barre: Stories of Ballet in Uganda." His work explores the quiet emergence of ballet in a country where the art form exists on the cultural margins, documenting the resilience, passion, and determination of young dancers who pursue their craft despite facing economic, social, and structural barriers. Akolamazima will receive a Fujifilm X-T50 camera and XF 16-50 kit, courtesy of Fujifilm Middle East FZE.
The UPPA 2025 evaluation was conducted by a jury of regional photography professionals, including documentary photographer Ala Kheir from Sudan, photojournalist and documentary photographer Edward Echwalu from Uganda, and documentary photographer Maheder Haileselassie from Ethiopia.
The Young Photographer Award represents an educational initiative designed to nurture emerging photographers with a passion for documentary photography or photojournalism. The winner and runners-up will have the opportunity to participate in an intensive mentorship program. This program offers a bootcamp-style course providing hands-on photography learning while guiding participants in developing a documentary photography project under the guidance of industry professionals.
Agaba Joel Gabriel has been named the 2025 Young Photographer Award winner. Gabriel is a Kampala-based DJ, photographer, and theater maker whose multidisciplinary practice explores themes of memory, place, and belonging through experimental works rooted in preservation and everyday life. Gabriel receives a Fujifilm X-S20 camera with XF 16-50 kit, courtesy of Fujifilm Middle East FZE, along with an invitation to participate in next year's Emerging Photographer Mentorship Programme. During this program, Gabriel will have the opportunity to further develop their project and showcase their work during UPPA 2025. This year's Young Photographer Award was judged by photographers Zahara Abdul, Dennis Kimbugwe, and Esther Ruth Mbabazi, all from Uganda.
An exhibition featuring all winning images from this year's East African Photography Award, Uganda Press Photo Award, and Young Photographer Award will open to visitors on Thursday, September 25th at MoTIV Uganda and run until October 13th. The exhibition will also showcase work from Barbra Mercy Leni, winner of last year's Young Photographer Award, demonstrating the results of her participation in this year's Emerging Photographer Mentorship Programme. Leni will present her project "Salt Mining on Lake Katwe," which vividly portrays the vital but hazardous livelihood of miners. Her work details their endurance of harsh conditions and health risks for minimal compensation, underscoring the urgent need for formal protections, better tools, and health support while highlighting the critical gap between Uganda's labor policies and the harsh, unprotected reality of informal livelihoods.
This year's partners and sponsors include Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Uganda, Fujifilm Middle East FZE, Embassy of Sweden in Uganda, EU Delegation in Uganda, and Future Generation Foundation. The complete list of winners includes additional honorees across all categories, with photographers from Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda receiving recognition for their outstanding contributions to contemporary African photography and visual storytelling.
