Official portrait of Nigerian conservationist Rachel Ikemeh, recognised as one of five global winners of the 2026 Rolex Awards.
Nigerian biologist and conservationist Rachel Ikemeh has been named a 2026 Rolex Awards Laureate, recognised for her community-led efforts to protect the Niger Delta’s biodiversity, conserve threatened species, and improve the livelihoods of local communities. She is one of only five people in the world to receive the honour this year, and the only Nigerian among them. All five 2026 Laureates are women, hailing from Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru, China, and the United States, as Rolex marks the 50th anniversary of its Awards programme.
Ikemeh’s conservation journey began in 2013 during her first visit to the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta, despite being one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, home to the world’s third-largest mangrove forest and Africa’s second-largest swamp forest ecosystem, had been subjected to an estimated 7,000 oil spills as the epicentre of Nigeria’s oil industry. The pollution had forced fishing communities to take up logging, causing further degradation of the very habitats they depended on. Ikemeh’s response was to set up a community-led conservation programme, the South-West/Niger Delta Forest Project (SWNDFP), to protect this ecosystem before it was lost entirely.
Rachel Ikemeh conducts field research across the 5,839 hectares of protected forest to secure threatened species habitats from habitat degradation.
At the center of her mission is the critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey. In the 1990s, researchers estimated their numbers at 10,000. By 2021, following decades of ecosystem degradation, roughly 200 remained. That same year, however, marked a turning point. After years of advocacy and negotiation in a region defined by a tense socio-political landscape, Ikemeh succeeded in establishing a conservation area covering more than 1,000 hectares, protected by the local Apoi community. In the five years since, the monkey’s numbers have doubled.
The endemic Niger Delta red colobus monkey species whose population successfully doubled due to the South-West/Niger Delta Forest Project.
The SWNDFP now operates four conservation areas, protecting at least 13 threatened species across 5,839 hectares of forest. More than 2,500 local livelihoods have been improved, and over 18,000 people have engaged in conservation education. The Apoi community has also seen wider socio-economic benefits through employment, education, structural developments, and alternative livelihood programmes.
With the support of the Rolex Award, Ikemeh will now create four new community conservation areas and establish a training hub and mobile education programme to build conservation skills among communities. Among the new protected areas is a particularly historic addition. “We are establishing a locally managed marine area. It’s in a place called Foropa, it’s quite a distance from Apoi, but it will be the region’s first-ever marine protected area,” she said.
2026 Rolex Awards Laureate Rachel Ikemeh partners with local Apoi community leaders to implement community-led biodiversity protection strategies.
Beyond the numbers and the protected areas, Ikemeh speaks about something that means just as much to her: the shift in how communities see conservation, and who gets to lead it. “When I started out 21 years ago, girls were not doing what I was doing. In fact, Nigerians weren’t doing what I was doing. But something has changed. One of my team members asked a young boy from the community what he wanted to be when he grew up. He pointed at me. That still brings me to tears.”
SWNDFP founder Rachel Ikemeh leads an environmental education and alternative livelihood training hub for local community development.
Photo Credit: Rolex
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