CGAP 13th Annual Photo and Video Contest Winners Capture Resilience and Hope

The winner in this year’s CGAP Photo Contest deftly captures the uncertain future many young women in the Middle East and North Africa face. In his thought-provoking image, Hesham Fathy shows a young Sudanese woman looking pensively into the horizon as she leans against a fence, which could either trap her or free her. Despite the poverty of the surrounding landscape, she holds a smartphone, giving her access to a world beyond her own.

Although she is connected digitally to a wider world through the messaging service WhatsApp, which she was using before Fathy took the photo, the young woman is also held back by her financial and social circumstances.

For the 13th year, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) invited photographers from around the world to illustrate, with compelling images, the impact that financial inclusion can have on the 1.7 billion people who are unbanked. For the first time, the 2018 photo contest focused solely on Africa and accepted short video submissions.

Fathy’s photo entitled, “Hoping to Get Out into the Future”, was selected as the Grand Prize Winner out of 614 photo entries from over 30 African countries. Msia Kibona Clark, contest judge and assistant professor of African Studies at Howard University in Washington, DC, said of the winning photo: “The image is so evocative, yet it is open to interpretation. The way she is holding the phone, it symbolizes opening up possibilities.”