Africa’s Great Green Wall: a COP16 Priority against Desertification

The Great Green Wall is often viewed as a simple “wall of trees” planted to combat desertification in the Sahel. Behind this symbolic image, what is the initiative really about? What tangible objectives have been set for land restoration, carbon sequestration and rural development?

Sandra Rullière: The Great Green Wall (GGW) is a flagship initiative of the African Union and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and will be a central topic of discussion at COP16, which opened in Riyadh on Monday December 2.

The program’s initial objective was to plant a continuous strip of trees of around fifteen kilometers wide, stretching across the African continent from west to east, from Dakar to Djibouti (hence its description as a “wall of trees”). However, the GGW initiative has since adopted a broader and more integrated approach: it promotes a variety of sustainable land and ecosystem management initiatives, and supports the diversification and resilience of agro-silvo-pastoral production in the Sahel region. 

By 2030, the GGW aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequester 250 million tons of carbon and create 10 million jobs, thus improving food security for 20 million people, helping to improve the living conditions of millions of people living in the Sahel, and promoting more climate-resilient agricultural practices. 

The GGW is an ambitious African initiative to advance development in rural Sahelian regions and transform the agricultural sector by fully incorporating environmental issues. 

See also: The Great Green Wall: Restoring Land in Africa

Sixteen years into its implementation, has the Great Green Wall achieved its aims? What actual progress has been made on the ground? Can the objectives for 2030, such as restoring 100 million hectares of land, still be achieved?

At the moment, it’s still too early to say whether the GGW initiative has been successful, as the targets set are for 2030. 

The results achieved by the halfway point were mixed, but a new strategy was launched at the One Planet Summit in January 2021 to give the GGW initiative new impetus, with France leading the way. This summit helped to rally the support of stakeholders and partners around a strategy to accelerate and raise more financing for the GGW, with $19.6 billion pledged for the period from 2021 to 2025. A multi-stakeholder coordination platform was also established to ramp up the efforts of all partners, monitor financial commitments and report on the results achieved.

The GGW Accelerator is an opportunity to promote the development of rural areas, biodiversity, climate and stability in the Sahel, and AFD Group is fully behind this initiative. Between 2021 and 2024, AFD allocated close to €501 million to support the acceleration of the GGW initiative in eleven countries. This financing accounts for over 80% of the €600 million pledged at the One Planet Summit in 2021, for the period from 2021 to 2025.

As of 2023, AFD has financed GGW projects in eleven countries, whether still in progress or now complete. 1.5 million vulnerable people have been provided with support, 906,000 family farms have improved their economic performance or established the right conditions to do so, 8 million hectares of land have benefited from sustainable resource and/or land management programs, and 607,600 family farms have received support to convert their operations to agro-ecological systems. 

How does AFD structure its operations to maximize the impact of projects financed in the field?

AFD applies a concerted, partnership-based approach to identify and prepare the projects financed, together with its partners, with the aim of maximizing the impact on the ground for Sahelian communities. The projects financed help support line ministries (such as agriculture, livestock breeding and environment) in implementing sector-specific policies and strategies, in line with the aims of the GGW, as well as local authorities, civil society organizations, professional agricultural organizations and research institutions.

In addition to French financing, we have also been working to mobilize our partners, like the European Union and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), to fund ambitious projects together.

Infographic: Africa's Great Green Wall: Restoring Land for Food Security

In this same vein, AFD has granted a new €75 million loan for Nigeria that will be used to co-finance, in collaboration with IFAD, a sustainable agriculture program in the north of the country. This €145 million project aims to improve food and nutritional security and increase household incomes in nine states in northern Nigeria by developing inclusive and sustainable agricultural value chains to drive transformation in rural areas.

To achieve the objectives set for 2030, the GGW initiative must be de-compartmentalized, all stakeholders must be involved in the development of rural Sahelian regions, and local communities must play a central role in defining and implementing regional development strategies and governance models for land and natural resources.

Could the Great Green Wall become a continent-wide initiative? What are the barriers, particularly in financial and institutional terms, to expanding this model to other vulnerable regions of Africa, and what strategic opportunities would this open up?

Collectively, we must step up our efforts beyond the eleven GGW countries to support the transition and wider adoption of agro-ecological practices throughout Africa, to meet the food and nutritional needs of communities, including the most vulnerable groups, to create jobs and added value in rural areas, prevent land degradation and protect ecosystems. Achieving this will require ambitious public policies and major public investment, including from public agricultural banks. 

AFD Group is already working in countries outside of the GGW to support the integration of environmental issues into production value chains and improve governance of land and agro-silvo-pastoral resources, thus promoting local economies and peaceful rural areas. As a result, we recently pledged our support for the Nouakchott +10, the high-level declaration on the development of livestock and the securing of pastoral systems in West Africa and the Sahel region.