July 21: Africa ambitious Great Green Wall initiative, launched by the African Union in 2007 to combat desertification across the Sahel, is evolving from its original vision of planting a continuous wall of trees into a broader landscape restoration programme focused on sustainable land management.
The project spans nearly 8,000 kilometres from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Djibouti on the Red Sea, covering 11 countries along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. It aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million jobs by 2030.
While the initiative was initially envisioned as a continuous belt of trees, implementation over nearly two decades has revealed the challenges of restoring ecosystems across diverse landscapes affected by drought, grazing pressure and varying land ownership systems. Many tree plantations have struggled due to harsh climatic conditions, livestock grazing and maintenance challenges.
Experts say some of the project’s greatest successes have come through farmer managed natural regeneration, particularly in Niger, where communities protect and prune naturally occurring tree stumps instead of planting new seedlings. The approach has restored millions of hectares of tree cover while improving soil fertility and agricultural productivity.
Other restoration methods gaining traction include community managed forest regeneration agroforestry protected grazing areas and traditional water harvesting techniques such as zai pits which help capture rainfall and restore degraded farmland.
Recognising these outcomes, the Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall has shifted its focus from counting planted trees to measuring the total area brought under sustainable land management, including regenerated forests, restored grasslands and agroforestry systems.
Monitoring has also improved with the use of satellite imagery from Landsat and Sentinel-2, allowing countries to track restoration progress more accurately and verify reported achievements.
Environmental experts note that restoring connected landscapes rather than isolated plantations can provide greater benefits for biodiversity, carbon storage and ecosystem resilience. They argue that linking restored habitats across the Sahel could strengthen wildlife movement, improve soil health and enhance climate resilience for millions of people living along the desert’s southern edge.
Despite ongoing challenges, the initiative is increasingly being viewed not as a single wall of trees, but as a long term effort to restore degraded ecosystems and support sustainable livelihoods across one of the world’s most climate vulnerable regions.