Up to 65% of productive land in Africa is degraded, with 45% experiencing desertification. The Sahara-Sahelian zone is among the world’s regions most affected by desertification, land degradation, and climate change. It faces frequent droughts and rainfall variability, leaving its rainfed agriculture highly vulnerable. These environmental challenges are worsened by significant poverty and vulnerability among the 200 million people who live in the region, creating a cycle of low agricultural productivity and persistent rural poverty, often referred to as a poverty trap.
The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI), initiated in early 2000, is a concerted and robust political and technical response by the Sahel-Saharan States to their environmental and climatic challenges. Although it is not the first initiative of this type in the Sahara-Sahelian zone, its regional scope and global support by the leading international donors make it unprecedented.
One should remember that most Sahel-Saharan States are also part of the world’s most fragile and vulnerable states (see Fragile States Index developed by Fund for Peace). With limited institutional capacities, coordinating the several scales of such initiatives, from the global (financing) to the local (for impacts), is a considerable challenge.
1st version of the project: top-down logic undermined Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan set up the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) in 2007 which original aim was to plant a 7,000km long, 15km wide tree barrier linking Dakar to Djibouti. The political supervision is ensured by the African Union and the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD). The Panafrican Agency of GGW (PAAGGW), set up in Chad in 2010, supervises, coordinates and monitors the implementation across the 11 Member States. The Conference of Heads of State ensures diplomatic support, crucial in advocating for the initiative’s international positioning and resource mobilisation. In contrast, the decision-making process depends on a set of committees. The PAAGGW is replicated at each country level through national coordination agencies that are accountable for operational implementation.
Extracted from Transparency International report: Governance mapping and assessment of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel initiative; accessible at: https://www.transparency.org/en/publications/governance-mapping-assessment-great-green-wall-for-sahara-and-sahel
External funding is routed through donor agencies, financing several large-scale or country-focused programs. Nearly USD 1 billion of financing was committed to transboundary international projects to support the GGWI. Still, according to the UNCCD report, for the 2011-2019 period, the member states reported contributing USD 53.4 million to the GGWI and receiving USD 149 million in external funding.
Regional programs participating in the GGWI initiative (initiated before 2020).
Table based on The Great Green Wall Implementation Status and Way Ahead to 2030, by UNCCD, accessible at https://www.unccd.int/resources/publications/great-green-wall-implementation-status-and-way-ahead-2030
* BRICKS is a sub-project of SAWAP, so the amount is not added to the others when calculating the total.
** Some projects target more countries than the countries of the GGW initiative
*** When possible, only the amount related to activities in the countries of the GGW initiative is considered
To achieve its objectives, the approach relied on identifying a strip based on climatological parameters at the regional scale, then refined by national experts taking account of specific bio-physical, sociological and priority features (national scale). A set of land uses was to form the green wall, including forests, artificial plantations, agro-sylvo-pastoral units, and parks through conservation, rehabilitation, and sustainable land management. From the earlier stage, GGWI stressed the importance of a decentralised approach to community empowerment for successful implementation. In particular, GGWI intended to integrate the local population from conception to implementation, monitoring and sustainability.
The first review of the GGWI implementation was carried out by UNCCD (The Great Green Wall Implementation Status and Way Ahead to 2030, as mentioned above) and was released in 2020. If 18 million hectares were restored in the region, only 4 million ha have been rehabilitated in the strict intervention zone. The report and other stakeholders identified significant barriers, primarily related to organisational challenges associated with the complexity of the multi-scalar, multi-stakeholder project—one key aspect related to financing that member states perceive as insecure.
Reshaping the GGWI to improve the global-to-local coordination
Significant delays and slow progress led to structural changes in the GGWI. First, the framing shifted from implementing a green wall to a mosaic of green and productive land-use systems, and poverty reduction became the project’s central objective. The UNCCD report states that the vision of a green barrier to stop the desert from advancing is incorrect. The preferred strategy, which elaboration was supported by donors and the UN, is to increase the ecosystem’s resilience to climate change and recurrent drought, transforming the arid zones of the Sahel into integrated Rural Production and Sustainable Development clusters. GGWI became a programming tool for the sustainable development of drylands, with promises of better alignment between the initiative and financial donors. However, the shift in framing makes it (i) more complex to track progress and (ii) even more critical to engage and transfer ownership to local communities.
Objectives and 5 key pillars of the GGWI in its new version. Extract from AFD infographic available at https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/africas-great-green-wall-restoring-land-food-security
Second, project redefinition appealed to fresh financing and efforts to address governance obstacles identified in the previous phase. The One Planet Summit in 2021 offered new momentum and gathered almost USD 20 billion dedicated to GGWI. With new commitments, governance had to be improved to enhance accountability in using foreign funds, particularly monitoring and impact measurement. To this end, a temporary working group within UNCCD, the GGW Accelerator, was announced at the Summit. It successfully adopted a harmonised framework (five-pillar framework) and a platform to track fund flows, particularly the progress of funding pledges. However, in other governance aspects, PAAGGW receives weak political support; therefore, it lacks human and financial resources to take over the functions and activities the Accelerator addresses in 2025.
As 5 years remain to achieve the ambitious goals (see Figure X), governance is the first defining challenge for GGWI’s future. Community involvement, identified from the beginning, is the second defining challenge as the Initiative’s framing of community engagement remains weak. This could be achieved first by increasing transparency and access to the public to the use of funds (PAAGGW and national agencies). Moreover, the accelerator organised high-level and technical dialogues and supported the creation of the GGW National coalitions in most of the 11 countries. Promoting active participation goes beyond consultation and focuses on the role of such alliances in shaping the initiative through decision-making and advocacy for resource mobilisation, as well as support for sound land governance. With the constant surge of insecurity in the region, efficient mobilisation is more challenging but more crucial than ever.