Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize expands to Senegal and names two 2026 winners

The Ghanaian-French artist Kwama Frigaux and the Senegalese artist Fatoumata Sy have been named joint winners of the 2026 Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize, each receiving $5,000, a three-month residency and a solo exhibition. The announcement came during Accra Cultural Week (29 October–2 November), and it marks a structural change: for the first time, the prize is open to artists from Senegal as well as Ghana and its diaspora.

Gallery 1957, based in London and Accra, founded the prize in 2021 to support women artists connected to Ghana. This year it partnered with the Institut Français du Sénégal to extend eligibility to Senegalese women artists aged 18 or older, based at home or in the diaspora. The application window ran from June to September.

The prize takes its name from an Ashanti queen mother known for anticolonial resistance during British rule over what is now Ghana.

Who judged, and what the winners get

A six-member jury selected Frigaux and Sy:

• Touria El Glaoui, founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
• Serge Attukwei Clottey, Ghanaian artist
• Marie Hélène Pereira, senior curator at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt
• Jeanne Barral, curator at the Fondation Cartier
• Alexa Waley-Cohen, collector
• Dominique Heyse-Moore, senior curator of contemporary British art at Tate Britain

The residencies cross borders: Frigaux, the Ghanaian winner, will spend three months in Senegal; Sy, the Senegalese winner, will go to Ghana. Both will also receive solo exhibitions.

Runners-up are not left with nothing. They join a mentorship programme covering grant applications and entrepreneurship, led this year by the Nigerian artist Modupeola Fadugba and Aisha Ayensu, founder of the Ghanaian luxury fashion brand Christie Brown.

What does the expansion change?

Prize director Leila Zakhem frames the mentorship as central to the prize's longer reach. "I think [it's] an incredible programme that helps drive the longevity of [the prize's] impact," she told The Art Newspaper. "And it really creates a beautiful community." She also hopes jury members will follow applicants' work beyond the formal review process — a promise of ongoing attention the prize has not yet documented in results.

Zakhem's team weighed several countries for expansion, including Nigeria. The deciding factor, she says, was finding a "very good implementing partner." The Institut Français du Sénénal, as a "non-commercial space [with] a lot of credibility," fit. "They were very excited to partner with us on the prize," she added. What she does not specify is how many applications came from Senegal in this first year — a measure of whether the expansion has actually reached artists there.

Her stated ambition goes further: building a bridge between English- and French-speaking West African art communities, two scenes that historically run on separate institutional tracks.

The current prize-winner's visibility is already running. Theresah Ankomah, the 2025 winner, has a solo show, The Lore of Care: Maternal Acts of Devotion, on view through 5 December 2026 as part of Accra Cultural Week.

Next on the prize's roadmap: further expansion across West Africa, then potentially the wider continent, with winners drawn from different regions. "The goal is eventually to be the leading Pan-African female art prize on the continent," Zakhem said. That claim will rest on funding and partner institutions the prize has not yet named.